
Glass JtkO^^i 

BookJlJ^^- 

Cc^gMI^" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



MANUALS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 
FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 

Edited by Charles Foster Kent ^, V^ 

In collaboration with Henry H. Meyer 



/4//^ 



GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 



By MARY E. MOXCEY 

Introduction by 

GEORGE A. COE 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



-H6 



Copyright, 1916, by 
MARY E. MOXCEY 



If 

NOV 28 1916 

3)aA445807 



To 

MOTHERS, TEACHERS, 

AND OLDER 

FRIENDS OF GIRLS 



CONTENTS / 

CHAFTBB PAGE 

Introduction 7 

Preface 9 



PART I— INTRODUCTORY 

I. The Problems of Girlhood as the Older Genera- 
tion Sees Them 17 

II. The Childhood of the Girl 27 

III. Preparing the Girl for Adolescence 46 

PART II— EARLY ADOLESCENCE 

IV. The Physiological Factors 73 

V, The Psychological Factors 85 

VI. The Personal and Social Factors 104 

VII. Social and Educational Problems and Methods. . 120 

VIII. The Problems of Religious and Moral Education 140 

PART III— MIDDLE ADOLESCENCE 

IX. The Physiological Factors 159 

X. The Psychological Factors 171 

XI. The Personal Factors 186 

XII. The Sociological Factors 198 

XIII. Social and Educational Problems and Methods. . 212 

XIV. Education for Character: The Problem of 

Wholeness 234 

XV. Education for Character: The Problem of 

Expression 253 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

PART IV— LATER ADOLESCENCE 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

XVI. The Physiological and Sociological Significance . 275 

XVII. The Psychological Factors 291 

XVIII. The Personal and Social Problems of Prepara- 
tion FOR Adult Life 309 

XIX. Social and Educational Problems and Methods 328 
XX. The Fundamentals of a Young Woman's Religion 349 

Bibliography 377 

Index 395 



INTKODUCTION 

Having examined with critical care nearly all the 
manuscript of this work, I gladly avail myself of an 
opportunity furnished by the Editor of the Series to 
help introduce to the public a most timely publication. 
For some years a need has been felt for an analysis 
of the problems of adolescent girlhood from the com- 
bined standpoints of physiology, psychology, and the 
growth of character through education both formal and 
informal. Miss Moxcey demonstrates the possession 
of competent knowledge in all these fields. In addition 
she brings to her task extraordinarily valuable and 
well-digested experience with girls, and likewise criti- 
cal understanding of the principles and processes of 
religious education. The result is a book that is at 
once scientific, insightful, and practically helpful. I 
trust that it will have the wide reading that it deserves 
— the reading that is needed by parents and teachers 
in the interest of happy, wholesome young womanhood. 

George A. Ooe. 



PREFACE 

Girlhood has not yet been adequately studied. In 
most writings "the adolescent" has meant the adoles- 
cent boy. Recent years have seen, it is true, the 
beginning of a literature of girl life. Social workers 
have shown the relation of the girl problem to the 
wider social whole. Educators have recorded visions 
of better courses of study and better methods of train- 
ing girls for womanhood, and school administrators 
have brought to public attention other needs and prob- 
lems. Physicians have sought and found the causes 
which lead so many young girls to need their care, 
and they have uttered warnings and protests and prof- 
fered sound advice. Psychologists have accumulated 
data showing the normal development of the human 
mind from childhood through adolescence to maturity, 
and have noted some of the sex-differences in this prog- 
ress. Pathologists, by the study of abnormal develop- 
ments of the mental and emotional life of youth, have 
gained an understanding of many normal processes 
which ordinarily escape notice. 

But the abnormality and exaggeration of patholog- 
ical cases make the scientific works which describe 
them rather misleading to the lay reader who is inter- 
ested in the ordinary, healthy girl. In fact, even the 
writers themselves have sometimes forgotten that these 
cases are abnormal, and generalize as though all girls 
were like those who come under scientific observation 

9 



10 PREFACE 

just because they are unusual. Definite experiments 
in sex-differences are confined to a few, limited mental 
traits, and some of the findings are a by-product of 
other studies. Small as this material is in amount, 
much of it is invaluable ; but it lies buried in the midst 
of scientific volumes of wider scope, or scattered in 
fugitive magazine articles or papers read at special- 
ists' conferences. 

Again, while sociologists and psychologists are help- 
ing us to understand the laws of growing individuals 
and their relations to the world, the great science of 
education is itself passing through a revolution. Its 
aims and ideals have so altered that we must change 
many of our ideas of what we need to accomplish. All 
of these facts make it imperative that we shall in some 
way be able to apply the results of these specialized 
sciences as they are focused on the lives of girls. 
It is this need which has given the present writer the 
courage to attempt a beginning in this particular field. 
Since this book was begun the still meager number 
of volumes dealing distinctively with girlhood has 
doubled or trebled. These, however, all treat of special 
phases of girl life. Certain intensive studies of present 
problems make notable contributions to our knowledge. 
A few of the men and women, who have rare power 
to stimulate in girls high aims, and in adults strong 
ambitions to work with girls, have put some of this 
inspiration into print. Diligent search has been made 
through available literature for scientific facts and for 
points of view; but the facts that have been most 
illuminating have been those acquired during nearly 
twenty-five years of intimacy with all sorts of girls. 
Perhaps it was the coincidence of entering her teens 



PKEFACE 11 

and at the same time taking up her interrupted school- 
ing in a new community that developed in the writer 
the habit of trying to understand why girls acted and 
thought as they did. The comradeship of these and 
other groups of girls in various enterprises in school 
and college, and varied experiences as leader in club, 
settlement, Young Women's Christian Association and 
Church school work, have given an opportunity for 
observation of the behavior and insight into the 
motives of girls under a wide range of conditions in 
our recent and present American life. 

These girls include groups and individuals from 
homes of wealth or culture, or both, or neither; from 
country, small town, small cities and great; with 
"American ancestry from the Mayflower or from the 
last steamer ;" studying in high school, private school, 
small college and great university ; working in store, 
office, kitchen, factory, or professional life; and with 
every degree of help or of handicap from native ability, 
health, or home. The great underlying uniformities 
which seemed to stand out among the aspirations and 
problems of these girls were confirmed by coworkers 
who talked over the problems of girls under their 
charge in other parts of this country and all over the 
world. Letters and diaries from other sources showed 
the same tendencies in the kind of girl who must intro- 
spect and who must record her introspections. The 
statistical facts from printed studies pointed in the 
same direction, and the conviction of universality grew 
to a certainty. 

The following chapters are the result of reviewing all 
these facts from the standpoint of modern psychology 
and education. They do not claim completeness in 



12 PREFACE 

scope or treatment. Some of the most vital problems, 
such as ^'temperament," for example, and others, 
remain untouched because they are like the map of 
Central Africa before Livingstone, a great blank, 
labeled "Unexplored Territory." The aim has been to 
adhere rigidly to facts and principles that are unassail- 
able. Alluring theories not backed by proof have been 
excluded. 

The volume is offered to those who by inner or 
outer compulsion are bound fast to the lives of girls, 
and who follow rules better for knowing the principles 
back of them. It is hoped that it will prove helpful 
alike to those who have no special preparation in psy- 
chology or the science of education, and to those whose 
familiarity with these subjects has made them keenly 
conscious of the need for more definite knowledge 
about girls. 

Grateful acknowledgment is due to my teachers in 
psychology, Professor Woodworth, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, and Professor Thorndike, of Teachers Col- 
lege. Dr. E. K. Strong, Jr., of Peabody Institute, 
gave access before its publication to the manuscript of 
one of his experimental studies, with permission to 
use the facts therein established. None of these 
authorities are responsible for the deductions made. 
Indebtedness to the authors of social, educational, 
and scientific studies is indicated in the bibliography 
and in many references throughout the text. Miss 
Helen E. Diller, of Teachers College, and Mrs. Martin 
Smallwood read the manuscript and gave helpful sug- 
gestions. Valuable illustrative incidents and insight 
into the problems of the worker came from many 
friends who acted as a preliminary public. 



PREFACE 13 

Above all, the thanks of any who may find the follow- 
ing pages useful are due to Professor George A. Coe, 
of Union Theological Seminary, without whose encour- 
agement and stimulating criticism the volume would 
not have appeared. 

The Author. 



PAET I 
INTRODUCTORY 



CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEMS OF GIRLHOOD AS THE OLDER GENERA- 
TION SEES THEM 

The fact that you have opened this book shows that 
you have something to do with girls. And if you have, 
you doubtless have some "girl problem." 

Perhaps your Virginia just rushed in from school 
and out again with the hurried explanation, "I'm 
going to Madeilyne's.'' An uncomfortable feeling 
arose, and you have been trying to make clear to your- 
self where it came from. Was it that only yesterday 
your little daughter dutifully came and asked if she 
might go and stay an hour, while to-day she announces 
that fact as though the spending of her time were 
entirely her own concern? Or was there even a bit of 
resentfulness in her tone because you asked an explana- 
tion? Or has there arisen in your mind a vague doubt 
of Madeilyne? Is it because of the way she spells her 
name ? You dismiss the last query with a reminiscent 
smile over the time when it seemed the height of unkind- 
ness that your parents should have irrevocably chris- 
tened you plain "Mary," and you experimented secretly 
with "Marie" and "Maere." 

The Chum Problem. No, it is not that, but somehow 
the discomfort becomes more acute when you think of 
Madeilyne and Virginia together. You are sure you 
are "getting warm.^' Madeilyne is small, but she is 
nearing fifteen. Virginia is not thirteen. A year ago 
Madeilyne ignored her existence as a "mere kid." But 
this fall, when Virginia's lengthening knees required 

17 



18 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTEE 

frocks that would insure their staying covered without 
a weekly ^'letting down" of skirts, and she skipped 
half a grade in school, Madeilyne began to be gracious. 
Virginia came home a-flutter at the flattery, and vol- 
ubly eager to tell of the new friend's charms. As you 
think carefully, is that the last time she has been vol- 
uble to you about the things that concern her most? 
Is that sore spot in your heart due to the fact that 
not Mother but Chum is now the close confidante? 
Does liiat ache come from a selfish jealousy over the 
widening of little daughter's world, or is it an instinc- 
tive warning of a danger against which little daughter 
must be protected? 

The Boy Problem. Perhaps as your troubled eyes 
followed the two girls, Dick and Reginald joined them. 
Virginia has romped with Dick since they were babies. 
Eeginald you do not know well, but he has seemed to 
you too suave and too knowing for a perfectly healthy- 
minded boy. And when you asked Virginia where they 
went and what they did she was noncommunicative 
and evasive. A few weeks later pointed teasing from 
her brother, to which Virginia ought surely to be accus- 
tomed, brings forth anger and tears. The "boy prob- 
lem'' is upon you ! What are you going to do about it ? 

The Problem of the Adoree. Is it especially puzzling 
because you had no such problem with Faith? Stu- 
dious, sixteen-year-old Faith, who is already a senior 
in high school, had little time for the boys while she 
worked for honor grades. However, another sort of 
anxiety comes into your heart when you think of her. 
Last year one of the teachers, a woman of maturity, 
culture, and gracious charm, took note of Faith's 
ability and ambition and gave special time to helping 



THE PROBLEMS OF GIRLHOOD 19 

her. The interest was genuine. To responsive Faith 
she seemed an embodiment of all her ideals. That 
this ideal should condescend to particular notice 'of 
her humble self was bliss unspeakable. Flushed 
cheeks, trembling hands, and quickened breath showed 
the passionate affection which no "stupid boy" could 
arouse in one so intellectually precocious and emotion- 
ally dormant. This year the teacher has a position of 
heavy responsibility in another city. A picture post- 
card giving the new address and a friendly greeting 
at the opening of school; a marked copy of the local 
paper with an account of a special bit of her school 
work, and another postcard at Christmas seem to you, 
with your knowledge of how inadequate are time and 
strength to stretch over work and letter-writing, to 
be marks of an unusual steadfastness of interest. But 
the girl's pale cheeks and hollow eyes let you guess 
the grief she is too proud to tell. Some . day it all 
comes out in bitterness: "If she really cared, she 
would mahe ^time.' I have written her the very inside 
of my heart, but to her I am only a ^former pupil,' to 
have a postcard once in a while till I am completely 
forgotten." Is this adoration of ideal womanhood a 
blessing or a curse to the ardent young girl? Do you 
know how to make it the one and not the other? 

The Undesirable Lover. Perhaps it is Una that weighs 
most heavily on your heart. Dear, merry, dependable 
Una, your first-born, who mothered the other children 
till sometimes you smiled at the fancy that in her 
thought you were merely "first assistant," while hers 
was the real responsibility. To matter-of-fact Una 
boys were an indispensable part of the good times 
which "the crowd" had together. Her time with her 



20 GIRLHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

girl friends was somewhat automatically distributed 
among those who needed her most — to get the arith- 
metic lesson or finish the dishes or baste the lace 
frill in the party dress. As mother's needs seemed to 
Una most important, there never was any question of 
her being monopolized by others, and she was your 
comfort. But now her motherlike responsibility is 
centered on ne'er-do-well Harry. Lovable and weak, 
Harry is making her believe that if she marries him, 
he can be a man. How are you going to save Una from 
heartbreak? 

Problems of Discipline and Understanding. Perhaps 
you are not a mother. Possibly you are a teacher 
who knows and loves little children, but you have been 
^^promoted" in salary and responsibility, to the eighth 
grade, or to a grammar-school principalship. Can 
these be the same girls with whom you had such happy 
times in the fourth grade? Is it anarchy, or rank indi- 
vidualism, or class solidarity, that causes this or the 
other crisis in discipline? Is it physiological disturb- 
ance, or the ^'Seventh Street crowd," or '-demoniac 
possession," that has transformed modest, truthful, 
biddable little Fannie into a coarse and bold coquette, 
defying all authority and lying her way glibly through 
all her clandestine escapades? 

Or it may be you have just gone from college, with 
your shiny new degree, to teach in a high school. You 
have high ideals of scholarship and teaching and per- 
sonal responsibility. Remembering acutely the things 
your own high-school instruction lacked, and fresh 
from the inspiration of some of the most wonderful 
educators in the country, you are eager to teach as 
you have just been taught. But the thrilling ideals 



THE PROBLEMS OF GIRLHOOD 21 

you set forth are laughed at; the general principles 
which have been keys to unlock your universe seem 
to your puzzled pupils ill-fitting night-latches, used in 
the dark to doors that lead nowhere. How are you 
going to help them to do their own thinking? 

Problems of Social Amenities. Alive to your respon- 
sibility to the community for the social life of these 
boys and girls, are you pained at the vulgar dancing, 
or, if in a community of different traditions, at the 
equally vulgar kissing games in which they delight? 
Do you suspect that this delight is not so much in 
the conduct itself as in "shocking" you? or in demon- 
strating that their life out of school hours is *^none of 
your business" and they "will not be bossed" ? 

The Clique Problem. Or it may be that the girls' 
behavior is most fastidiously correct, but you find 
them bound into little snobbish cliques that paralyze 
both school spirit and individual growth. Is there 
anything you can do ? How are you going about it ? 

Problems of Social Conditions. Perhaps you have 
leisure enough from your home or profession to have 
volunteered for leadership of a girls' club in a Y. W. 
C. A. or settlement. To these girls, with their nerves 
and muscles strained by eight or ten hours of monot- 
onous factory process or office work, or by meeting 
the demands of more or less "cranky" customers at the 
sales counter, what kind of recreation are you going 
to offer? Ought they to "improve their minds"? Can 
they? You have much to share with them. Do you 
know how to make them want what you have? 

Problems of Diverse Backgrounds. Or is your group 
in a Sunday school where the dozen or so girls in their 
late teens who come at all are put together into one 



22 GIELHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

class? Can you find a common '^point of contact" 
for your teaching, or any activity which will inter- 
est girls so diverse in home and education and occupa- 
tion ? In your Sunday school class, or among the fresh- 
men you teach in college, is there a girl who glories in 
her "agnosticism"? What does she really mean by 
that? What is she seeking? And that other girl whose 
keen mind doubts much that has been taught her as 
essential to religion, and whose heart is troubled and 
restless — will you be able to understand two disposi- 
tions so different from each other and from yourself? 
And without understanding, how can you help ? 

Problems of Home Conditions. Possibly you are a very 
^^ordinary housewife" who has felt and responded to 
the call of the ''neglected girl." Your laundress has 
confided to you her fears about the daughter who is 
''wild" and who may "get into trouble." Have you a 
pretty clear idea what Lily^ ought to do and to know ? 
Do you know how to tell her so she will understand, 
and to make her feel that you understand the crude 
longings of her stubborn, thwarted, pleasure-loving 
soul? 

Problems of Race and Temperament. Elated with the 
joy of a successful season with a Camp Fire group in 
your own town, have you tried a summer camp with 
a strange group from a city — and met your Waterloo? 
The difference was not in you or in your methods. 
What made the difference in the girls? Were they of 
the same races? Had the home, the school, and the 
social standards about them been busy these fifteen 
years in molding the human stuff to a product so dif- 
ferent that it could not give the same response? 

1 See Clara E. Laughlin's The Work-a-day Girl, pp. 104ff. 



THE PROBLEMS OF GIRLHOOD 23 

The Problem of Infinite Variety. We have but dipped 
here and there into the stream of girl life. Every- 
where we bring up a problem. Yours, no doubt, is 
different quite from any of those suggested in the pre- 
ceding pages, although each of them has been that of 
some real persons. The only reason for touching on 
the bewildering variety is the crucial question : 

Are there common^ fundamental problems of girl- 
hood^ and are there any general laws or principles to 
help in solving them? 

Common Fundamentals. The very fact that each girl 
you know is different indicates one fundamental law — 
that of variability. But variation presupposes a stand- 
ard from which and limits within which it takes place. 
That every girl is constantly changing with growth 
shows another fundamental law, that of development 
or progress ; and progress presupposes a starting point, 
a goal, a path to the goal, and measurable distance 
along that path. 

As you think over your experience you will prob- 
ably conclude that the period of adolescent girlhood is 
marked by the presence, more or less, of certain factors. 
In some individual girl any one of these factors may 
be entirely absent, but usually you will find at least 
these : certain marked physiological changes of growth 
and function ; the prominence of three new interests — 
the girl chum, the boy, and the woman ideal, represent- 
ing friendship, romance, and hero-worship; some sort 
of positive attitude toward play and work; the domi- 
nance of the public opinion of age-equals over both the 
opinion and the authority of the family; and preemi- 
nently the assertion of the self as an independent and 
equal individual. There is also a progressive change 



24 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

in the relative power of these factors through the years 
till womanhood is reached. 

Essentials for a Solution. This does not exhaust the 
catalogue, but it makes clear the fact that there are 
some strong forces which we may confidently expect 
to be at work in a girl, just because she is a girl, 
whether we find her in China or India ; on our Western 
prairies or in the sunny South; in the slums of a 
great city or in a fashionable boarding school; or in 
our own family. Are these forces all friends and allies 
if understood and directed, or are there some we must 
always suppress? Is the difference in their manifesta- 
tion one of inner nature or outer surroundings? The 
deep and all-inclusive problem for each of us who has 
responsibility for any girl life is this: How shall we 
help the girl to become a strong and complete woman? 
Of what help in solving this will it be to know the 
material of the immature personality and the new 
forces which are at work? Surely none, unless we 
also know how to direct them so they will help to pro- 
duce the desired character. There are geniuses who 
can use these forces with sure and delicate mastery. 
Few of us, alas ! are geniuses. Yet we dare not bungle, 
for that may mean chaos in a human life. Is there 
knowledge that will insure tolerable skill and success? 
Not yet has the law been clearly disentangled from the 
accidental and unimportant elements in all cases of 
instinctive success, but enough is available to make 
most of us vastly less awkward than we are. 

The Scope of This Book. The whole subject of our 
inquiry is in much the same condition as that of 
cookery before domestic science entered the field. 
There were cooks whose delectable products were the 



THE PROBLEMS OF GIRLHOOD 25 

result of a "born knack," quite incommunicable. 
There were others whose equally delicious results were 
perfected by long practice of the careful directions of 
treasured recipes. At the same time the sciences of 
chemistry and physiology were highly developed, but 
the only point at which the two fields approached each 
other was the physician's summary prescriptions or 
proscriptions of diet, with a possible explanatory refer- 
ence to "acids" or "starches." Meantime in every fam- 
ily, meals were eaten, and somebody cooked them — 
and in many dyspepsia claimed its victims. But now 
domestic science makes it possible for any intelligent 
person to understand the standards of diet and the 
principles of good cooking; to control the conditions, 
and thus to secure satisfactory results. 

There have always been growing girls, and in every 
generation there have been men and women of sym- 
pathy and insight who have helped girls to achieve 
fine character. Very little, however, of the wisdom 
resulting from the experience of these men and women 
has ever been recorded so as to be accessible to others, 
even in the form of "recipes," although there are some 
suggestive descriptions of methods that worked well in 
special cases and circumstances. Such rules and pro- 
grams are helpful, even though they do not give the 
reasons why successful results will follow. But in 
our rapidly changing world, a program made for a 
country girl, or a method successful with a school girl 
of one decade, in the next five or ten years will have to 
be applied to conditions so altered that it will be use- 
less. To fit it to present problems one must rely not 
on rules nor on analogies but on underlying principles. 

Many of these principles are now formulated and 



26 GIRLHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

proved, but their knowledge is too often confined to 
those who have about as much to do with order-ing the 
ordinary life of girls as stomach specialists have to do 
with the ordinary family kitchen. Some of these 
principles come from masses of observed facts about 
girls: facts about their senses, their muscles, their 
visible emotions, and their structural changes, ob- 
tained from measurements of thousands of girls. Other 
principles come from other careful psychological experi- 
ments on fewer individuals, and from still others which 
have followed the changes of individual minds from 
infancy to maturity. Yet others come from the 
rapidly developing science of education. 

It would be possible to compile all these facts and 
principles and gather them into one volume which 
would be all tables and formulae — and hopelessly unen- 
lightening. The following chapters are an attempt to 
put them together in a way that shall be usable, not 
as a book of recipes, nor a textbook on food chemistry, 
nor a collection of "Practical Hints to Housewives," 
but as a parallel in girl-training to the first book in 
the science of home economics. It is a contribution to 

"The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's, 
.... not to fancy what were fair in life 

Provided it could be — ^but, finding first 
What may be, then find how to make it fair 

Up to our means; a very different thing!" 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 1, 6, 23, 28, 31, 33, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHILDHOOD OP THE GIRL 

Lucy Larcom says: "The child that I was . . . 
seems to me like my little sister, at play in a garden 
where I may at any time return and find her. . . . 
Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does 
not, except in appearance, lose her first thin, luminous 
curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her 
full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the 
completeness of womanly character." ^ 

Continuity of Adolescence with Childhood. About the 
time a girl enters her teens, problems of the kind con- 
sidered in the last chapter arise with bewildering swift- 
ness and suddenness. She may sometimes seem, both 
to herself and to us, to be a different person from the 
little girl we knew. But adolescence does not displace 
or supplant childhood any more than a blossom sup- 
plants the plant from which it grows. The plant in 
blossom is really different from the sprouting seed, 
and from the slender stem with its green leaves; but 
it is the same plant, and you know from the seed you 
planted, or from the shape of the leaves which showed 
when you bought it from the greenhouse, whether you 
are to expect a poppy or a violet or a lily. By putting 
your plant into a different soil, or by regulating the 
heat and moisture, you may get a larger or more richly 
colored blossom, but you will not change the kind of 
flower. In our garden of girlhood we must know the 
kind of plant we really have, in order to select its 

1 A New England Girlhood, pp. 12, 13. 

27 



28 GIELHOOD AXD CHAEACTER 

proper soil and care for it witli skill ; and with girls as 
wi^th flowers the earlier the proper care is begun the 
more successful will be the result. 

The Law of Development. From seed to blossom, 
from babyhood to young-womanhood, a growing life 
passes through a definite order of development. Help 
or hindrance at any given stage of growth affects each 
succeeding stage. Each individual living thing differs 
from others of its kind in the length of time taken to 
reach and to pass through various phases of its develop- 
ment, and in its amount of susceptibility or resistance 
to the influences which act upon it. Yet this variation 
is, within limits, sufficiently defined, so that even in 
varied seasons a gardener can count on average suc- 
cess with his carnations or cauliflower or primroses or 
potatoes. So a child may walk at ten months or at 
twenty, and she may read at three years or at six; 
but unless she is a cripple, she will walk before she 
reads. One stage of growth may be prolonged and an- 
other hastened by circumstances until they overlap, or 
through lack of opportunity some possibilities may 
never develop; it is this variation that makes the life 
of each girl we know so different and so fascinating. 
But if we know the general order of development of 
girl life from infancy to womanhood, the differences 
will be more intelligible. Any girl will be less jDuzzling 
if we look at her growth in the light of the great race- 
processes, where what is universal stands out from 
what is distinctly indi\'idual. 

The Biology of the Girl Child. Every human life 
begins as one cell, a microscopic sphere of jelly-like 
life, which combines the physical and mental possi- 
bilities from the long lines of ancestry of both the 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIEL 29 

father and the mother. Life must grow, and this one 
cell gets larger and divides, and then re-divides. Each 
of these first cells has the marvelous possibility of mak- 
ing out of the food stuff provided it, muscles, or bones, 
or sense-organs, or nerves, or other tissues for a human 
body. Very soon this life-stuff with its multitude of 
possibilities divides in a more definite way. One tiny 
group of cells still contains all these undifferentiated 
possibilities which have come through parents and 
countless "greats" of grandparents. The other group 
has chosen out just one set of possibilities, which can 
build one human individual, with hair and eyes of a 
certain color, bones and muscles for a certain height, 
digestive organs with a sort of a chemical prejudice 
for certain food stuffs, brain cells that act quickly or 
slowly, sense-organs responsive to a certain range of 
sounds and colors — in short, all the things which make 
the girl baby "like" father and mother and kindred, 
and yet create her different, individual self. 

Cells of the first group into which the germ divides 
are called reproductive cells. They grow compara- 
tively little for many years, doing hardly more than 
to keep alive. Cells of the second group are the body 
cells (in scientific textbooks they are also called 
"somatic" cells), and they perform the marvelous feat 
of increasing from a size scarcely visible without a 
microscope to the bulk and complex mechanism of a 
baby's body and brain at birth, and then keep right on 
building food stuff into human life till adult size is 
reached. 

The Individual Built from "Somatic" Cells. A writer 
has cleverly said that "a baby is not a personality, it is 
merely a candidate for personality." In the first dozen 



30 GIELHOOD AXD CHAEACTEE 

years the girl baby acbieves a very distinct per- 
sonality. It cannot be comjolete nntil the first groni) 
of germ cells, hitherto inactive, has awakened and 
contributed its share, and it is this stage of building 
with which our study is chiefly concerned. It is 
this later stage, called adolescence, which develops 
the relation of the girl's personality to the race and 
to the world. But through childhood the ^'body 
cells" are building the individual, and this individual 
is becoming accustomed to the world of things and 
people about it. The business of childhood is to 
build a self, and in that sense only, childhood is "self- 
centered" — but not necessarily ''selfish." The business 
of adult life is to make the self count in the world of 
personalities for purposes bigger than the self. Ado- 
lescence is the time of change from one to the other. 
Sometimes this change in attitude never takes place, 
and the grown-up body has an undeveloped soul, using 
the larger physical and mental relations as a child 
would. In this failure is the root of all spiritual trag- 
edy and social crime. 

Whether this change to complete living comes at all, 
and whether it comes easily or with a great upheaval, 
depends on the direction of interests and habits in the 
years when the girl is in the making, body and brain, 
as an individual. What are the forces which determine 
this growth, and what is th^ order of their develop- 
ment? There are many popular books available which 
give information and help to parents and teachers of 
children. 2 However, in order to use with skill the new 
forces of adolescence, it is necessary here to review 
the childhood forces and processes which remain at 

2 See Bibliography, Numbers 58, 64, 65, 66, 69, 72, 77, 89. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 31 

work through adolescence, modifying and determining 
its results. 

Individual Development Determined by Experience. At 
any stage of her developing personality the individual 
girl is what she has experienced. "Experience" is here 
used to sum up all the conditions which enter into the 
child's consciousness — such as warmth, hunger, food, 
people who smile or punish, things that move or are 
still, that are hard or soft, edible or disagreeable, 
pretty or ugly, movable or out of reach. The girl's 
experience is determined by two things: what in the 
world of persons and things is within her reach, and 
what the mechanism of her body and brain makes pos- 
sible. 

A blind child cannot experience light, but neither 
can a child with perfect eyes, if she has never been 
out of a darkened room. A little girl in the tropics 
may be lithe as a panther, and a paralytic child in 
Norway may watch others skate every day, but neither 
one experiences skating. 

What part of her surroundings a child actually 
experiences can be known to others only by watching 
her behavior. By "behavior" is meant some activity 
observable by another person: such as continuance or 
discontinuance of actions; speech; bodily or facial 
expressions; and the ways of thinking and feeling 
which determine these activities. Thoughts and feel- 
ings can be observed at first hand only by the individual 
who thinks and feels, but when that individual reports 
them in speech or gesture or writing, these reports 
become observable behavior. 

The Relation of the Nervous System to Experience. 
"Experience" must first come to any individual 



32 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

through impressions on the senses; not only the "five 
senses" about which we were taught in our childhood, 
but those tiny sense organs within as well as with- 
out the surface of the body which report temperature, 
pressure, movement of muscles and tendons, and prob- 
ably a certain stimulation or irritation from chem- 
ical happenings within. In the last named are included 
those experiences, most difficult to analyze, of "well- 
being" or gloom that depend on the state of health ; 
and sensations of sex. 

"Behavior" implies the activity of muscles, whether 
of limbs or speech or expression, and muscle fibers 
act only when they are stirred by the action of a nerve. 
These impressions by way of the sense organs, and 
expressions by way of muscles, and the connections 
between them, depend on the organization and work- 
ing of the nervous system. Like any system or tissue 
of the body, such as blood vessels, skeleton, or muscles, 
the nervous system is made up of "cells." These spe- 
cial nerve cells differ much in form and size, but they 
all have the power to conduct the energy they receive 
to other nerve cells till finally the nerve cell along 
which the energy is running ends in some group of 
muscle cells, which contract from the energy of that 
impulse. The structure of these nerve cells and how 
they form their connections is the subject-matter of 
physiological psychology. What concerns us is the 
fact that what an individual experiences depends upon 
the forming of these connections, and the readiness 
with which they work. 

Sensory Stimulus and Motor Discharge. A single nerve 
cell, with all its extending branches and fibers by 
which an impulse may reach another cell, is called a 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 33 

neurone. The popular term for any connection, or 
chain of connections, between neurones which act in 
succession is "path.'^ Anything which gives an impulse 
to any neurone — light, sound, touch in those special- 
ized neurones contained in the sense organs, or the 
impulse from another neurone in the chain — is called 
a "stimulus." The response to a stimulus is always a 
"discharge" into another cell. When the impulse gets 
to the end of its nerve "path" it must discharge into 
some muscle, as in winking, talking, or running. The 
path between the stimulus and the "motor discharge" 
may be very simple, or very complex and long delayed, 
but to every stimulus there will ultimately be some 
sort of motor response. If the stimulus to the organ 
of hearing is a sudden loud noise, the motor discharge 
may be a violent and immediate contraction of many 
of the large muscles ; it "makes us jump." If the stim- 
ulus is a talk by Dr. Grenfell, the motor response in 
one person may be the act, an hour or a day later, of 
writing a check for the work of the hospital ship on 
the Labrador coast; another person may decide to go 
to college and medical school, and become a medical 
missionary. In this case the final motor discharge is 
in going wherever the need is greatest when prepara- 
tion is completed. 

"Sensori-Motor Paths" Illustrated. We have been 
speaking as though a "stimulus" were one simple 
thing, and the "motor response" another equally 
simple. But just try to think of all the separate 
steps involved in so simple a "path" as that between 
the stimulus "pin prick" and the baby's action, "jerk 
hand and cry." Then imagine how many more there 
are between the stimuli involved in a specially skillful 



34 



GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 




FIGURE 1 

a, Touch organ. 

h, Nerve center in spinal cord, 

c. Motor center in spinal cord, re- 

flex to 

d. Muscles moving hand. 

e. Sensory center in brain: "It 

hurts." 

/, Motor center in brain: "Let peo- 
ple know." 

g. Coordinating center in lower 
brain, sending impulses to 

h. Muscles to contract eyes and 

i, Open mouth and set larynx for a 
howl, and 

J, Respiration muscles for pro- 
longed expiration. 




C" Muaclea of 



C"5toopin4 
bjJancinietc 



A. 

of sight, affecting 

of touch, affecting 

of muscular tension, affecting 

of hearing, affecting 



FIGURE 2 
Sensory Stimuli. 



b. visual center in the brain. 
6', tactile center in the brain. 
b", kinesthetic center in the brain. 
b'", auditory center in the brain. 



B. Central Re-direction. 

b, b', b", b'", centers in brain receiving sensory stimuli and sending on the stimulus 

in discharges converging on bb, motor center in brain, 
(x represents images aroused by areas of the brain also stimulated by all these 
sensory stimuli, such as the memory of previous successful strokes and the 
feeling of the muscles that made them, the idea of triumph or defeat in the 
contest. These also affect bb, and modify the "orders" sent to bbb.) 

bb. Motor center in brain cortex, discharging into 

bbb, Motor center in lower brain which distributes the impulses along the various 
motor paths. 

C. Motor Response. 

c, c', c", c'" , Groups of muscles whose complex but coordinated contraction results 

in keeping the ball in sight while nm.ning, stooping for a back-handed blow, 
and regulating the force applied to the ball. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 35 

serve by your opponents at tennis and your successful 
return. 

Instinct-Acts. In the illustration just given, the 
baby's cry differs from the tennis game not only in 
being simpler, but also in that it did not have to be 
learned. So, if you put your finger into a tiny baby's 
palm its hand closes tight ; often a baby can cling so as 
to support its whole weight for several seconds. The 
first time anything is put into the baby's mouth there 
is a motor response of sucking. The first bright light 
makes the eyes blink. That is, a path between a sense- 
impression and a particular motor activity was all 
ready-made. The actions due to ready-made paths 
are called instinct-acts, and the paths most important 
for keeping one alive are ready-made at birth. 

Other paths are not finished for weeks, or months, 
or years, and many can be completed in several dif- 
ferent directions. One of these directions will be a 
little (it may be ever so little) nearer ready than 
another, depending on general health, or on what other 
connections are acting at the time the stimulus is 
given. When a stimulus appears, however, there must 
be some action; if the stimulus is entirely new the 
response must be through some ready-made path. If 
no nerve path is ready and no response takes place, 
we simply say that the organism was not stimulated. 
A kitten is not stimulated by light till its eyes are 
open; a chicken does not peck for a certain number of 
hours after it is hatched, and the most beautiful girl 
does not arouse romantic emotion in a boy till he 
reaches a certain age. These incomplete paths, which 
are not stimulated until the organism reaches a cer- 
tain stage in its growth, are the source of what are 



36 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

known as the delayed instincts. A child "learns" to 
walk and talk as soon as certain paths, unfinished at 
birth, are completed and ready to make the sensori- 
motor connection. Adolescence is but a period in 
which an important group of nerve paths become com- 
pleted and the delayed race instincts ripen. 

But if a child can do only what her repertory of 
instinct-acts will permit, how does she differ from a 
little automaton? The hope of developing a free per- 
sonality depends upon the 

Possibility of Varied Uesponses. It is useful to gather 
up all the stimuli, both sense impressions and mem- 
ories, which may be affecting the individual at any one 
instant into the word "situation," and to call the com- 
plex of impulses, movements, feelings and ideas which 
it calls forth, the "response." ^ What happens when 
a situation produces a response? Usually, along with 
the motor discharge there is an accompanying aware- 
ness of what is happening. The child is "conscious" 
of it, or "perceives" it. Most things bring a "feeling" 
along with the perception, and so are at the same time 
perceived as "agreeable" or "disagreeable," "pleasant" 
or "unpleasant" or "painful." These words are used 
by everyone with different meanings at different times, 
and even in the same connections they have different 
meanings for different people ; so it will be less confus- 
ing to say that the response is "satisfying" or "annoy- 
ing." 3 "Satisfying" means that the individual seeks 
to continue the situation or does nothing to avoid it. 
"Annoying" means that he tries to avoid the situation 
or ceases doing what would continue it. In this way 
we can judge of the feeling of any living being by 

* This is Professor Thorndike's usage. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 37 

watching his behavior, whether it is a kitten or a 
baby that cannot report its inner states, or an adult 
human being who wishes to conceal them. 

Now, the first response to any totally new situation 
must always be instinctive. But if the first instinctive 
response is not satisfying, or fails to remove the cause 
of annoyance, another of the nearly-ready paths will 
be tried, and so on until a successful or satisfying 
response has been made. Watch a sleeping child who 
has become uncovered and is cold. The "cuddling" 
movements, and finally the outcry, show successive 
responses to the annoying stimulus of the cold and 
efforts to secure satisfying contact with the covering. 
Also, if a new nerve-path is ready to connect, it may 
respond to a stimulus to which the individual has here- 
tofore responded by a different nerve-connection. A 
two-year-old may have been accustomed to give her 
arms to be lifted up by any adult who reached to take 
her. Suddenly an unaccountable shyness awakens, and 
she runs instead to hide her face in mother's lap ; and 
if the adult person persists, she may even burst into a 
storm of sobs. Adolescence will show many instances 
of the response to a familiar situation by a new 
instinct-act; when that critical period comes we need 
to realize that this variable behavior is akin to that 
which all through the child's growth has developed her 
knowledge and power by making new experiences pos- 
sible. 

The Instinctive Basis of Habit. The first response to 
any totally new situation is instinctive, but any con- 
nection which has once been made is easier to make 
again. This fact is the basis of habit formation. Other 
things being equal, the second time a sense-stimulus 



38 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

appears the movement-response will be the same, and 
instinct will become reenforced by habit. But altered 
conditions in the world outside the individual may 
alter the effect of that response so that it is no longer 
satisfying. Altered conditions, of health, or hunger, 
or sleepiness, or zest for activity may alter the satis- 
fyingness to the individual of the same effect. Because 
of these facts, and the new instinctive responses which 
occur unexpectedly from newly ripened nerve-paths, 
the first response does not determine for all time the 
habitual response. Habits can be broken or altered, 
and others substituted. Habits can also be consciously 
formed, but only by choosing from among the varied 
possible instinct responses. 

The baby cannot throw the ball at all until she has 
reached a certain development of nerve paths and 
muscular growth. It is the satisfyingness of the pet- 
ting and approval she receives when the instinctive 
throwing movement lands the ball in a certain place 
that makes her choose from among her wavering, 
uncertain responses those that feel like the successful 
one. In its instinctive vocalizing experiments every 
baby makes most of the elementary sounds of all lan- 
guages. Mother and friends respond with food and 
pleasing contacts of their arms to some of these sounds 
which are somewhat like words, and so baby acquires 
the habit of English or German or Umbundu, as the 
case may be. The other instinctive sounds are for- 
gotten or neglected because they fail to bring a satisfy- 
ing result, or meet with annoying disapproval. 

Habit and Ideas. If any sight or sound or other 
stimulus from the outer world, or any movement of 
the child's own body, enters into her "experience," it 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 39 

is because it is accompanied by a state of awareness 
or consciousness. This awareness is always accom- 
panied by a stimulation, which takes place at some 
stage in the sensori-motor paths, of nerve cells in the 
"cortex'' or highest center of the brain. It is important 
for one who would understand the development of the 
child to know that whenever any neurones have been 
stimulated simultaneously, or in immediate succession, 
if one of them is again stimulated, by any situation, 
the discharge tends to run in the same path as before, 
or to excite the other cells previously aroused at the 
same time. If a baby sees a barking dog, the next time 
she sees a dog she is apt to say "Bow-wow''; or if she 
hears the bark, to give evidence that she recalls the 
appearance of the animal. Also, if she sees another 
animal for the first time, such as a calf, or a bear at 
the zoo, she will probably say "Bow-wow." This is 
due to the stimulation of central neurones by other 
central neurones that were once aroused by a sensory 
stimulus. It is the basis of what we call "association 
of ideas," and it might well be called habit between 
ideas. In the fresh, new experiences of the child the 
central associations are easily aroused. As soon as her 
vocabulary allows her to report her inner experiences 
we find that these memory images are often so vivid 
that it is difficult for her to distinguish between the 
original experience and its recall. That is why the 
stick horse or the rocking chair railway are so satis- 
factory to the little child. A suggestion is enough to 
bring back the activity of the central neurones aroused 
by the real experience. 

Experience and Imagination. Ideas are only a station 
on the journey between stimulus and response. What 



40 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the child does in a new situation will depend both on 
instinctive response, and on the idea-motor path excited 
by the sense stimulus. We grown-ups know how 
absurdly the machinery of association brings ideas 
together, bridged by likenesses which touch only a small 
and often unessential part of the different experiences. 
But it is only the multitude of our experiences that tell 
us which ideas are absurd. The way things do happen 
is no more logical to the child than the chance asso- 
ciations of imagination. At any age association can 
bring to any individual only such ideas as have been 
founded in that individual's experience. Whatever a 
person has experienced, and nothing else, can be recom- 
bined to extend that experience. The Eskimo lad 
in his round-topped igloo read of a New York apart- 
ment house, and tried to understand his teacher's 
explanation that it was ^'like many houses piled on 
top of one another." When he went with that teacher 
to the coast settlement and saw a three-story building 
he said : "Now I know what an apartment house must 
be like. Before, I could not think one house on top of 
another." 

In early childhood imagination is never abstract. 
The new is created by putting together parts of known 
tilings^ like the mock-turtle of Alice in Wonderland. 
In later childhood the thirst for information includes 
the desire to know the relation of things to one another, 
and imagination widens to take in laws and principles 
of a concrete sort. Adolescence furnishes new expe- 
riences and new powers which make possible the truly 
creative imagination of philosophy, poetry, romance 
and scientific achievement. It is a failure to realize the 
difference between the earlier and later powers of 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIKL 41 

imagination which causes parents and teachers many 
disappointments in apparent moral failure of the child. 
An injunction is obeyed literally in the circumstances 
specified. In a new situation, whose similarity to 
the one specified seems "plain as day" to the parent, 
the command is not obeyed. Probably to the child the 
connection actually did not occur. Similarly, the tall 
twelve-year-old girl may repeat with fluency and expres- 
sive intonation the exalted principles urged by her 
teacher. But if in her immaturity she has no expe- 
rience to fasten them to, when the situation arises in 
which their use would be her safeguard, they are 
lying filed away among the mere associations of words- 
which-belong-to-Sunday-school. 

Some problems of truth-telling are also problems of 
imagination. Five-year-old Helen had imaginary play- 
mates who were very real. Great was her distress if 
any of the family attempted to occupy a chair in 
which she had seated "Mrs. Horpin" or "Mr. Cawn- 
daw." The social functions of these imaginary fam- 
ilies were a source of much amusement to Helen's 
family. But once the "imaginary" invitations were 
given to "real" little playmates, and accepted, much 
to the consternation of mother on a particularly busy 
day. It took a lengthy process of helping for the child 
to be able to keep the two worlds distinct. 

Activity Essential to Knowledge. In the child's organ- 
ism, there is little delay between sensory stimulus and 
motor expression. The idea-station on the sensori- 
motor path is passed through without stopping. A 
child's interest in any object is chiefly in what can be 
done with it, and her nouns are defined in terms of 
verbs. "Lap" is "to sit in," "hair" is "to comb," and 



42 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

indeed ^'dog" is at first ''bow-wow," and the cars "choo- 
choo." It is significant that the uninstructed child 
never says that eyes are "to see with," but "to sleep 
with," or "to wink." Sensation is so immediate 
as to be unconscious of the organs intervening. Neither 
is the child conscious of its instinctive responses until 
the inner sense organs send up to the central cells the 
report of how the response feels. Then response and 
stimulus are associated in one state of awareness, and 
as such are recalled by memory and utilized in imag- 
ination. How can a child really know that the toot 
comes out of the whistle until the sound, the sight, the 
feeling of it in her lips, are all associated with that 
muscular concentration within herself when she her- 
self blows the whistle? The "instincts of manipula- 
tion" are among the earliest manifested and the most 
permanent in the human individual. The greater the 
opportunity for the child to try out in action the idea- 
motor images stimulated by the mechanism of associa- 
tion, the more quickly and certainly does she acquire 
a knowledge of reality, and that habit of associating 
cause and effect which we call "good judgment." 

Action the Basis of Will. By the will is here meant 
freedom to choose and to act. This is quite different 
from a passionate and stubborn clinging to personal, 
instinctive impulses. Willing includes thinking, be- 
cause thinking is a form of acting. There are possibil- 
ities of choosing which connection shall be made be- 
tween ideas, and of building habits of connection be- 
tween certain thoughts and certain actions. Through 
childhood, brain and muscle cells and the connections 
between them are developing and changing rapidly, 
and therefore both the response to a given situation, 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 43 

and its satisfyingness, also change rapidly. Note the 
response of a baby, at three months, six months, or one 
year, to the situation of being held upright with feet 
touching the floor. A child who at two was considered 
somewhat slow of speech, using hardly more than a 
score of words, at three found evident satisfaction in 
repeating every word he heard. He gleefully accepted 
the name "Cyrano de Bergerac" for the long-nosed 
Teddy-bear, and greatly enjoyed the amusement mani- 
fested by his elders at his clear enunciation. These 
muscle and nerve changes and the memory of previous 
actions and their results, by making possible different 
responses to practically the same situation, require the 
exercise of choice. The present mood or need deter- 
mines which of the results associated with a given stim- 
ulus will be most satisfying, and so determines choice. 

But the child also develops very early a recognition 
of the difference between her own, instinctive desire 
and that of another. Associated with the idea of the 
other's desire is the memory of that other's satisfaction 
at a response made in accordance with it. It is also 
an instinctive desire to elicit expressions of satisfac- 
tion from another person for whom affection is felt. 
It is necessary to choose not only between different 
responses, but between the different satisfactions to be 
attained. These choices form the basis of the social 
development of the will. In adolescence the number of 
situations and of possible responses multiply bewilder- 
ingly, but if the will has been habituated to choices 
which regard the desire of others before the personal 
impulse, much has been done to simplify one of the 
most diflScult problems of that period. 

Affection an Inseparable Factor. Among the first and 



44 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the most persistent of the "situations" to which the 
child responds is the affection of persons around her. 
The first possible manifestation of this attitude is in 
physical contacts that satisfy its bodily wants — carry- 
ing, feeding, fondling. The first possible response from 
the child is a preference, in unmistakable baby lan- 
guage, for the persons whose methods are most satis- 
fying. The satisfyingness of habit itself soon enters 
into these preferences. As the years pass the means 
of perceiving and showing affection increase in num- 
ber and delicacy, but at root the child's affection is 
shown by preference for companionship. The satisfac- 
tion afforded by the "person who is the situation" is 
one of the strongest elements in the child's choice of 
various possible actions. 

Childhood's personal likes and dislikes are strong, 
but the great differentiations of affection do not nor- 
mally occur until the physical and mental basis for 
them is developed. Her affections, though they differ in 
degree, are the same in kind, and that kind is family 
affection. All likable adults are treated as belonging 
in greater or less degree to the genus parents. All 
boys and girls, older or younger, are just boys and 
girls, to be treated with the democratic spirit of child- 
hood, unless this attitude has been modified by parental 
influence. With babies and pets spontaneous affection 
expresses itself in forms copied from family life. This 
is true also in games. Listen to the three-year-old 
with her dollie if you want to know how her mother 
puts her to bed. The baby spoon must have a mamma 
spoon. One little girl had two pancakes put on her 
plate, one large and one very small. She ate the tiny 
one first, and then saying, "Don't cry, baby, mamma's 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE GIRL 45 

coming," ate the other. No child needs to be told that 
the "great, huge bear," and the "middle-sized bear," 
and the "teeny-weeny bear" were respectively papa, 
mamma, and baby. The family is the unit of the child's 
world. 

SUMMARY 

The "preadolescent personality," then, is builded of 
certain ideas, activities, habits, and preferences, deter- 
mined by innate capacities of body and brain, and by 
the varied forces of environment and education. Be- 
cause environment in these earlier years can be so 
largely controlled, we can help to provide for the 
crucial time just ahead a sound and active body, good 
habits, adequate knowledge, wide interests, high ideals, 
and wholesome affections. The emerging personality 
will have quite enough to do in the adolescent years 
without the handicap of physical weakness, habits to 
break, interests and ideals to throw away or to acquire 
suddenly, or affections which conflict with maturing 
judgment. What a teacher, parent, or friend can do 
for an adolescent girl depends in large measure upon 
the experiences which the girl has already had. If as 
teacher or friend we come into the girPs life after 
childhood is past, without a knowledge of the main 
factors in that past our, efforts to help will be largely 
futile. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 11, 56, 63, 67, 69, 91, 94, 100, 102, 111. 



CHAPTER III 
PREPARING THE GIRL FOR ADOLESCENCE 

With the changes that appear in the early teens 
there come to every girl new dreams, new experiences, 
new passions. But she will have no other muscular 
skill and bodily vigor to work out the new dreams, 
no other standards by which to interpret the new expe- 
riences, and no other affections by w^hich to master the 
new passions than those which can be developed from 
the growth already made. The vigor of her will de- 
pends upon the vitality of the whole bodily mechanism. 

Preparation an Educational Problem. If we did not 
believe that we can in some way do something to make 
the lives of girls different from what they are, and 
different from what they would be if we did nothing, 
this book would not have been written, and you would 
not read it. But the process of making any "immature 
individual" different, by purposeful action on the part 
of some other person who feels the responsibility, is 
the process of education. Differences in the future 
must grow out of differences that we in some way 
make in present behavior. Differences in present be- 
havior can only be made by making changes in the con- 
ditions that call it forth. To insure the happiest 
issue of the troublous years of adolescence, the educa- 
tive process must begin while those years are still in 
the future. If, as parent or teacher, we have the right 
and the opportunity to modify conditions in the girl's 
life through childhood, what shall be the goal and the 
method of our work? 

The End and the Means. The purpose that defines 

46 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 47 

our educational goal must be to meet the girFs own 
need. It is a useless drain upon vital energy for her 
to decide anew with every return of a situation whether 
she shall do what ought to be done. In such funda- 
mentals as obedience, honesty, and truth, habit should 
be supreme. Every girl has the right to be trained 
from babyhood into these moral habits, and also into 
bodily habits of muscular activity and endurance, of 
good digestion and excretion, of sound sleep and right 
breathing. It also makes a tremendous difference in 
what surroundings the dozen years of childhood are 
spent. What has the childish imagination to feed 
upon ? What are the standards for childish imitation ? 
What ideas are stored in the mind, ready for the new 
forces to work into purposes? Moral and religious 
educators are tremendously concerned with what the 
girl loves and chooses, but she must perforce love and 
choose only from what she knows, and she is obliged to 
show her preference and affection only by what she can 
do. 

What means are available for achieving our goal? 
Education, which is, in its simplest definition, a change 
of behavior through experience, is made possible be- 
cause of the facts already cited in the last chapter: 
More than one connection is possible between sensory 
stimuli and motor responses; various connections will 
be tried between these until satisfaction is achieved. 
To be sure, life is not so beautifully simple as that 
sounds ! There are a few fundamental instincts which 
must work if the organism is to exist at all. Aside 
from these, so complex are all situations, and so varied 
their possible responses, that one cannot be sure of 
even the probability of the same response to a given 



48 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

situation from a number of individuals. But if an edu- 
cator could push a button and know exactly what 
would happen, how uninteresting his work would be! 
And we can count on these fundamentals : That which 
produces behavior is instinct, or the motor response 
to stimulus; that which changes behavior is the satis- 
fyingness or annoyingness of experience: and that 
which makes behavior permanent is habit. It is this 
simplifying of the problem into the fundamentals of 
the situation and the laws of the response which make 
a goal and a method in education possible.^ 

Educational Use of Situations. Babyhood.is busy with 
contact. The baby comes into an unknown world, and 
part of her first business in living is to find out about 
it. The knowledge of herself as one object among 
others is the result of a series of experiments and dis- 
coveries. The people who form her world are also most 
important facts, and the laws of their behavior are 
among the information earliest acquired. A baby soon 
adjusts herself to an order of life which it is useless to 
attempt to change, but the caprice of her elders makes 
the world a puzzle, and justifies her in attempting to 
adjust it to her own caprice. A familiar situation 
gives confidence to anyone, child or adult. But to 
childhood so much is of necessity strange, it is unfair 
to add uncertainties where the child has a right to 
expect reliability. A promise or a threat, sometimes 
fulfilled and sometimes empty words; an act of dis- 
obedience sometimes punished and sometimes laughed 
at; affection sometimes repulsed and sometimes 
returned with vehement caresses — how can a child asso- 
ciate situation and response in consistent behavior, or 

1 E. L. Thorndike, Bibliography, Numbers 67, 94. 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 49 

store ideas which unfolding intelligence can correlate 
into a conception of law and order? 

In the cry of a tiny baby it is easy to distinguish the 
hurt cry from the hungry cry, and to alter behavior 
by altering the situation — by removing the pin or sup- 
plying food. But the growing child's selfishness or 
sullenness may be due to a human pin-prick, or teasing 
or bullying, or a hunger for understanding. It is easier 
and harder for the educator to alter the personal situa- 
tions than the physical; harder if the adult person is 
one who will not alter his own behavior, easier if the 
person is one who has the child's interest sufficiently 
at heart to seek for the causes of given effects and 
behave accordingly. There is not space here to take 
up a subject upon which volumes have been written,^ 
but only to emphasize the importance of a purposeful 
arrangement of the personal and impersonal situations 
to which the child must respond, to secure the responses 
from which habits which will ultimately produce 
womanly character can be formed. 

Educational Use of Habit. The law of the baby's life 
is to get what is pleasing to her, and she will choose 
the quickest means to that end. If something unpleas- 
ant happens when the command from either parent is 
first ignored; if the desire is achieved by adding 
"please" and refused without it; if the gentle tone 
receives attention and the fretful one does not, habits 
are formed accordingly. The child who never gets 
what it cries or teases for will not long cry or tease 
for what it wants. 

When the educator has decided upon a habit that 



» See Bibliograjphy, Numbers 58, 62, 76, 77, 89, for a few of the most helpful 
books on this subject. 



50 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the child should form, effective progress will come only 
by following the laws of habit formation. A connec- 
tion once made between a situation and a particular 
response is easier to make again. It also grows easier 
the more times it is repeated. This is called the "law 
of use." But the repetition must be of a connection 
which was originally made by the child's own, instinc- 
tive impulse, or else the habit is only that of passively 
permitting something to happen to her in the given 
situation. A child will never learn to draw a triangle 
from having the teacher guide her passive fingers. But 
if from the marks made in her random playing with a 
pencil the child succeeds in bringing three lines to- 
gether to form a crude triangle, with due encourage- 
ment "practice will make perfect." And so with the 
"curtsy," or with regular attendance at school, or 
promptness at meals, or any other desirable habit. 
The child could be bent, or carried bodily to school, or 
dressed and seated in her chair at the table, if suflScient 
physical force were employed! But no matter with 
what regularity such a procedure were carried out by 
the able-bodied adult, no connection would have been 
formed between the child's voluntary behavior and the 
respective situations of being introduced to a stranger, 
or seeing the clock hands point to half-past eight, or 
hearing the summons to meals. To get a habit started, 
the situation must first be so arranged as to secure the 
desired response from the child's own impulsive 
activity. 

To fix habit, two factors are essential : the situation 
must be repeated without distracting differences, thus 
giving free play to the "law of use"; and the effect 
must be satisfying. Frequent repetition tends to 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 51 

strengthen any connection and the more recently a 
given connection has been made, the more probable is it 
that response to the given stimulus will be the same. 
On the other hand, a connection which has not been 
made often or recently tends to become weaker, that is, 
harder to make again. This fact is called the "law of 
disuse," and the laws of use and disuse, together called 
the "law of exercise," are of greatest practical import- 
ance. Of equal importance are the "laws of effect," 
already referred to. They may be thus summed up: 
The satisfyingness of any response tends to strengthen 
the connection which produces that response and so to 
make it habitual; the annoyingness of any response 
tends to weaken the connection which produces it, and 
therefore works in the same direction as the law of dis- 
use, to break up a habit. 

Educational application would seem to be self- 
evident, and yet two of the most obvious practical rules 
which follow from these laws are constantly violated. 
^'Put together what you wish to have go together. 
Reward good impulses. Conversely ; Keep apart what 
you wish to have separate. Let undesirable impulses 
hring discomjort.^' ^ Yet how stupidly have we told 
the little girl : "You need not try to beg off ; you've got 
to go to Sunday school," thus putting the idea of com- 
pulsion, of undesirableness, with the thing we wish her 
to love. Far wiser was the mother who explained her 
child's absence from Sunday school as a punishment 
inflicted for improper behavior the week before. 
Surely, no two things should be kept farther apart in 
the child's experience than anger, temper, or trickery, 
and attaining a desired end ; yet that connection is the 

'E. L. Thorndike, Principles of Teaching, p. 110. 



52 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

very one we allow all too frequently to be made. To 
relieve our own annoyance, without thought of the 
effect on the child's character, we permit the storm of 
temper to be rewarded. 

Making Good Habits Satisfying. If you have any part 
in training the girl in her childhood, hold up habits in 
the light of wealth to be achieved. Think a moment. 
When you hear the word "habit," isn't your first asso- 
ciation with the idea of "something to break"? But 
if biting nails and toeing in are habits to be vigorously 
fought and routed, why not gaily pursue and capture 
habits of prompt and cheerful rising, and never for- 
getting to brush the teeth? It becomes a fascinating 
race between the children of a family, or with one's 
own record, to see how quickly a desirable habit can 
be formed. Which can dress most expeditiously? or 
how many minutes can one's own record be reduced in 
a week? How soon can the new scale be played per- 
fectly without thinking of the fingering? How many 
days can the record remain unbroken of watering the 
plants or taking care of the canary or dusting the piano 
icithout being reminded f How many "clean pages" in 
the matter of not using slang phrases, or exaggeration, 
or yielding to some well-known provocation to temper ? 

In this habit-achieving, the "law of effect" suggests 
that a powerful aid in "stamping in" the new habit to 
real permanency is the prompt and unfailing associa- 
tion of some satisfaction that naturally goes with it. 
The time gained by quicker dressing or getting an 
assigned lesson without dawdling can properly be given 
to the fascinating storybook, or paper dolls at Jennie's 
house. The record of efficiency and reliability in unfor- 
gotten household tasks should help determine readiness 



PEEPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 53 

and trustworthiness for some coveted responsibility or 
pleasure. This does not by any means suggest a barter- 
ing attitude, or a calculating selfishness. It is not so 
much good conduct paid for so much indulgence, but 
so much proof of fitness, clear to the child's sense of 
justice. The more acts of courtesy and unselfishness 
that have become habitual, the more opportunity for 
inventiveness in giving pleasure, for freedom in the 
promptings of affection. 

Perhaps the importance of permanently forming 
desirable habits is to some less obvious during the 
years of childhood than in the transition years which 
follow it. We shall see that the break-up of some habits 
by the use of new motives then available is encourag- 
ingly possible ; but all that can be "done and over with" 
in childhood is clear gain. When the new womanli- 
ness is ready for the center of attention it will demand 
all the girPs time and energy — and the educator's too. 
Habits that are a desirable life possession will be wel- 
comed by both as a funded capital for the new enter- 
prise. 

While the educator is choosing the habits that will 
be needed in later years, appropriate activity must be 
aroused from among the impulses now available, and 
satisfying effects must have that quality now. If the 
little girl does not at present care one jot about being 
graceful, she almost certainly does care about being 
able to do things. A faulty standing position that is 
associated only with warnings that she will not look 
well when she is grown up is not apt to receive much 
attention from a girl of eight or ten. But if she sees 
the connection between that faulty position and some 
defeat in a present ambition, it will receive her careful 



54 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

attention. That present ambition may, indeed, be one 
whose fulfillment is consciously remote. But if she 
sees that a woman with a crooked spine cannot hope 
to model freely as a sculptor, nor sing as well as if 
both lungs had their due space, nor make her future 
home as happy as she wishes to because there will be 
less strength to do what she wishes, the connection 
with the present ambition makes the effect immediate. 

It is also legitimate to make a judicious use of "an- 
noyers," according to the second law of effect. The 
little girl who rebels at brushing her teeth also rebels 
at submitting to the affectionate embraces of old 
Auntie White because of her offensive breath. There 
is a perfectly suitable object lesson ready to hand! 
Childhood's quick ridicule of affectation and of queer 
mannerisms can be turned to account if the ridiculous- 
ness is seen to be due to habits that were not broken. 

It is quite as necessary to remember the fact of indi- 
vidual differences in the matter of what is satisfying 
or annoying. The thing we offer as reward may not 
appeal to this child at all. The rebuke that reduces 
one child to tears of mortification leaves another 
unconcerned. If punishment must be meted to a girl, 
in order to make "undesirable impulses bring discom- 
fort," we must be sure that the intended punishment 
brings discomfort to that particular child. On the 
other hand, the thing that is associated with a desir- 
able impulse should be a real incentive to its repetition. 

Emotion as Motive. In most situations the strong- 
est element of satisfyingness or annoyingness is the 
emotion which is aroused. The consequent influence 
on habit, through the law of effect, makes emotion of 
tremendous educational importance. Emotion is a 



PREPAKING FOR ADOLESCENCE 55 

term better understood by experience than by defini- 
tion, but it may be roughly described as the way an 
instinctive response feels.*' 

It is debatable ground whether there are emotions 
into which no sensations enter. It will be safe to say 
that for all persons through childhood and adolescence, 
and for most persons all their lives, the larger part of 



4 For example: 

You are sitting tranquilly reading, not thinking about the fact that you are also 
breathing, yoiir heart is beating, your temperature is normal, and your dinner 
digesting peacefully. Suddenly your chair is propelled rapidly over the floor 
and you are tipped in it nearly to reclining. About the time you are conscious of 
this, if you can analyze what is going on, you will find that your heart has ap- 
parently stopped beating, and then jumped into your throat; your hands and 
feet are cold; your breath is quick and labored, and your mouth dry. As your 
head follows the chair-back still lower and you look up into the roguish face of the 
prank-loving big boy of the family, your face grows red, your feet and hands warm, 
your breath and heart-beat quicken, and the tongue becomes perfectly Umber for 
the scolding the boy expects. 

In telling of the experience later you vpiU say that you were frightened and 
then angry, thus naming two primitive emoti(3ns. 

What was your fright? Your consciousness of your instinctive responses. The 
"stimulus" of your suddenly and mysteriously changed position brought a ready- 
made response through a center in your spinal cord which changed the activity of 
circulation, respiration, sahva secretion, and many other inner factors. These were 
themselves a strong stimulus to the sense organs of temperature, pressure, and ten- 
sion, and these sensations reached the cortex almost as soon as those which brought 
the perception of the change in your surroimdings. The whole complex product, of 
sensations and of central processes which did not have time to become clear images 
or ideas, was the emotion of fear. The sudden transfer of attention from your 
reading to this complex just described was one for which the central neurones 
involved were unready, and was therefore annoying. The stimulation of the 
sense centers involved in the bodily changes mentioned seems always to be an- 
noying. The emotion of fear is, therefore, always unwelcome, and one of the 
deterrent motives. 

When you perceived "who was doing it" the situation was changed, the stimulus 
was altered, and the reflex response of your heart and breath changed correspond- 
ingly. The different circulatory and respiratory and muscular and glandular 
activity gave other strong sense-impressions which, with the perception of the 
changed situation, made another complex of perceptions and feeling tone, and you 
were angry. Anger is a contradictory sort of emotion in that it is both satisfying 
and annoying. The idea content is annoying, but the reflex efi'ect on the glands 
stimulates to activity and to sensations which are, to a degree, at least, satisfying. 
It is this mixed character which makes it so puzzling to the educator. Perhaps it 
is enough to say here that it represents a group[of powerful motives which become 
dangerous or valuable according to the associations, and that these associations 
are capable of control if handled with sufl&cient skill. 

The good-natured laugh and affectionate "bear-hug" from the person who was 
the situation aroused many associations of ideas, and you felt the emotion of 
tenderness. This is an emotion which you can experience at any time by calling 
up the same ideas. These ideas could be reported as, "He is a dear boy, and I am 
fond of him, though he is a tease." But what is the emotion itself? It is these 
ideas, or the perception of them, plus something. In this case you can trace 
incipient movements of the arms as toward fondling, an upward tightening of the 
throat, perhaps a pressure about the eyes as of starting tears, and a sort of relaxa- 
tion of various other muscles as of letting go a burden, and a slightly quickened 
breath and heart-beat. 



56 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

emotional life is composed of some sense-perception or 
idea, together with ideas associated so quickly and so 
numerously that none of them come clearly into focus, 
and the accompaniment of more or less intense, but 
vague sensations of motor and visceral reactions of 
an instinctive kind. When these sensations from 
within are not accompanied by any definite idea we use 
the word "mood" rather than "emotion," 

Persons, and ideas connected with persons, form the 
overwhelming majority of the situations to which 
human beings respond. One of the most permanent and 
compelling motives of life at any stage is the intensity 
of two emotions : satisfaction at approval of oneself 
by other people, and misery at failure to secure that 
approval. Why do men and women wear clothing at 
which they inwardly protest, and buy things they know 
they cannot afford? Because a swelling forward of 
the chest, a lifting of the head, and quickening pulse 
and general expansiveness of self-consciousness are 
instinctive responses to glances of admiration or envy. 
To most individuals these sensations are far more satis- 
fying than the sensations aroused by being able to 
step normally, or by having one's throat protected but 
not bound, or by seeing three digits instead of a row 
of ciphers in one's bank book. If the situation "being 
made fun of by one's equals or inferiors" brings an 
instinctive response of wave on wave of intense, invol- 
untary blushing, of choked breathing, and sinking, 
constricted heart, who would not prefer the torture of 
tight boots, or gladly toil for hours to procure super- 
ficial essentials that may win the approval of the 
crowd? 

Educational TJse of Emotions. Emotions can be used 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 57 

educationally for three reasons: First, while they are 
always aroused by some sensory or ideal stimulus, 
they can always be separated from that stimulus in 
recalling the situation. The fact of a bad fall is dis- 
tinguishable in memory from the fact that the fall 
frightened one. The details of an excursion can be 
enumerated as distinct from the pleasure which suf- 
fused every moment and every detail of the experience. 
Second, the emotion cannot be continued while its 
stimulus is being analyzed. The return of the stimulus, 
or even its memory, may rearouse the emotion; but 
to analyze the emotion is to center the attention on 
something other than the situation which roused it, 
and so inevitably to produce another response. The 
only effective way to deal with hindering or harmful 
emotions is not to contemplate their cause, but to con- 
sider the relation of their cause, or of their effect, to 
other facts, and give them their proper value. It is 
good educational science which lies back of the nursery 
philosophy : 

For every evil under the sun 

There is a remedy or there is none. 

If there is one, try and find it; 

If there is none, never mind it! 

Desirable emotions, on the other hand, are secured not 
by attending to the desired effect, but to the situation 
to which the joy or tenderness or compassion is the 
instinctive response. 

Third, emotions can be detached from one situation 
and attached to another, and their powerful motive 
force thus be utilized in habit-forming. This is accom- 
plished partly by the process of analysis, and partly by 
the law of association. For example: Chagrin is an 



58 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

emotion so intensely annoying as to make us willing to 
endure almost anything else, rather than again expe- 
rience the chagrin. It does not seem to make much 
difference in its poignancy whether the cause is using 
the wrong fork for salad, or being caught eavesdrop- 
ping. But the fundamental situation to which chagrin 
is the instinctive response is failing to meet a standard 
observed by other persons whose opinions we value. In 
the first instance cited, the standard concerns artificial 
and external relations between people who are, after 
all, only a small fraction of the world. The second is 
a standard which applies wherever there are human 
beings to trust or distrust each other. It is one of 
those standards which, because it is inward and human 
and universal, and relates to the right and wrong of 
conduct, we call ^^ethical." Even a child can see that 
there are noble people in the world who may never 
have eaten a salad, or who may have known but one 
shape of fork to use for all purposes. But the child 
can also see that there is no time or place or condition 
where self-respect or respect for the rights of others 
will excuse underhandedness of any kind. We learn 
to be disturbed by chagrin, or elated by approval, 
according to the value of the standards by which we 
are weighed. 

Adolescence is so overwhelmed with emotions that 
one of the greatest services that childhood training 
can render is to produce the habit of controlling them 
instead of surrendering blindly to them. If the girl 
learns to consider that an emotion is something to be 
understood, to have its cause ascertained and its effects 
considered, and to be directed or gotten rid of accord- 
ing to its character value, she has the key to solve most 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 59 

of the riddles that accompany her growth into woman- 
hood. 

Emotion and Ideals. This is not an unattainable goal, 
although it has just been stated in words far removed 
from the little girPs experience. But do we not strive 
to teach children to be "afraid of nothing but doing 
wrong," to "hate nothing but meanness and sin'' (trans- 
lated into their besetting sins and tempting mean- 
nesses), and to translate their sensitiveness to ridicule 
into kindly thought for the feelings of others? Where 
we more often fail is in helping the little girl to find 
the causes of more complex emotions like anger or dis- 
taste, and to direct the muscular stimulation of a 
temper storm into controlled and efficient work instead 
of senseless muscular jerks. 

One of the most effective uses of emotions is that 
which utilizes the approval and disapproval of per- 
sons who have the child's instinctive affection. Every 
child's standard is first incarnated, and she can go no 
higher than the values with which she is made 
acquainted. What is set before her by definite instruc- 
tion will first be weighed in the lives the girl's keen 
eyes are watching. If it is not satisfying there, she 
will not be apt to use it in her own experimenting. On 
the other hand, nothing is more satisfying than a con- 
scious share in the standards, and a conscious success 
by the tests, of the grown-up persons whose opinions 
are most valued. Religion might almost be defined as 
the appreciation of a supreme standard of values by 
which actions should be determined, and God as the 
Person whose approval is the supreme standard. 

Hero-Worship. Father and mother are baby's first 
hero and heroine, and the attempted imitation of gait 



60 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

and gesture, voice and acts, is the expression of incip- 
ient idealizing. At first the ideal must be a concrete 
individual. With the story -hearing stage goes objective 
dramatizing or imitating; with story-reading comes 
subjective personifying. The little girl who is glued 
to the book is Snow White or the Lady Alicia. What 
you pry loose and send to do dishes or learn arithmetic 
is a captive princess in the ogre's power, who will some 
day throw off the hated disguise (of pig-tails and 
freckles and big apron) and be known to the world 
as her true self. That self is the Ideal which the little 
girl is building, from the "stylish" guest, from fairy 
queen and enchanted princess, from the great ones of 
history or the tawdry figure in the newspaper spotlight. 
Habits of thought are being graven deep, to determine 
the direction which the slumbering forces will take in 
the next stage of development. 

Interests: Instinctive and Acquired. Interest is mani- 
fested by involuntary attention. To small children 
moving things, small objects, bright colors, and noises 
are almost universally interesting. As children grow 
older individual differences in interests appear. It 
might be said that interest in any given thing in the 
world (such as music or machinery or pictures or arith- 
metic) varies in individual children from great 
intensity to none at all. A child's circle of instinctive 
interests may be very narrow, but there is scarcely any 
limit to the number which may be added by the law of 
association. Interest always spreads from anything 
which already arouses it to something else which is 
closely associated with it. The little girl who has done 
indifferent work in arithmetic suddenly manifests 
great interest in the subject when she reaches the next 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCEKCE 61 

grade. It may be that a delayed connection in her 
brain is just now ready to work, affording new instinc- 
tive interest in the subject; or it may be that the 
teacher has shown how indispensable is the multiplica- 
tion table and the ability to add and subtract quickly, 
if one is to be chosen on the committee to buy the 
groceries for the Thanksgiving baskets; or perhaps 
interest is in the new teacher and in a desire to please 
her by good progress. Affection and interest are closely 
associated. 

Educational Use of Interest. To find a compelling 
natural interest, and then to fasten to it the thing you 
wish to make interesting, is the surest road to success. 
Moral and religious education is peculiarly dependent 
on this law. By care in directing these radiating inter- 
ests, they may be made literally to reach around the 
world. Whether a vine lifts glossy leaves and full 
clusters or struggles fruitlessly in the mud depends 
on the trellis provided. Whether the little girl be- 
comes, as a woman, a broad-minded leader in civic 
affairs or an empty souled gossip depends largely on 
those who direct her thirst for information. 

Some of the leading child-students are convinced that 
even as little children the average girl is more inter- 
ested in persons than in things, and the boy in things 
than in persons. Interest in persons is the basis alike 
of petty sensitiveness, of itching ears for gossip, and 
of all the great philanthropic and educational move- 
ments. Interest in things is the foundation for science, 
for economic achievement, and also for that subordina- 
tion of human life to things which causes the greatest 
failures of our civilization. If the woman is to be well- 
balanced, we must take that one of these two interests 



62 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

which is dominant in the child and tie it solidly to the 
other. The great machinery of the industrial world 
becomes interesting because of the people who use it. 
Unseen people may grow interesting because their 
hands have fashioned the myriad things the girl uses. 
The four-year-old who is enraptured with the pretty 
wreath of flowers on her hat can be made eager to help 
the little girl who could not go out to play because she 
had to make those forget-me-nots. When she cuts and 
packs and mails to a kindergarten in Africa bright- 
colored squares of cloth, she will be eager to know about 
the little brown baby hands which will sew the beads on 
the same bright squares. Such interests are building 
out-going channels of habit in the child mind through 
which the woman's heart can flow out toward the ends 
of the earth, instead of stagnating in self-pity. 

Educational Use of Imagination. We have seen in the 
preceding chapter that imagination depends upon what 
the child has experienced, for the material it can use in 
its fanciful construction. The form of these imagina- 
tive creations will depend upon the child's dominant 
interests. Education has nothing other than the power 
of imagination on which to rely for bringing to the 
child's comprehension and understanding that which 
cannot be made present to its senses. That is, educa- 
tion uses imagination to extend the child's experience. 
The little child can understand the care of the heavenly 
Father only from her experience of parental care. She 
can appreciate the life of the child Jesus because she 
knows what it is to be a child, to obey, and to act so 
that everybody approves. Her relation to Jesus as 
teacher and friend will be real, because she has other 
teachers and friends ; but she cannot form an abstract 



PKEPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 63 

idea of such relationship. Three-year-old Margaret's 
nurse, Katie, had explained that "Jesus lives in the 
hearts of good people.'' Is it a tribute to Katie's good- 
ness that Margaret eagerly explained to her mother, "I 
know where Jesus lives! — in Tatie's tummy-box"? 

To the little cripple in Mrs. Ewing's Story of a Short 
Life, bravery was an attribute of soldiers, and could 
be shown only on the battlefields. But when one whose 
courage was vouched for by the Victoria Cross showed 
him that bravery is in bearing pain without flinching, 
the child in his wheel chair bore his suffering like a real 
hero. 

The child whose vivid imagination leads to actual 
confusion of scenes that are only ideas with those that 
are present to her senses can be helped to test reality 
by comparing the effect on herself with the effect on 
others. Big sister would not sit down on the chair if 
she too saw the imaginary playmate. The test for 
"what is true" may be "what is true for others too." 
This same law holds in the age-old problem of the ideal 
and the real. When the child begins to challenge fic- 
tion and fable and fairy tale, the test can be "Is what 
it means true?" So too the shining Purpose in the 
child heart is to be made true by deeds which other 
persons can know and judge. But while we teach the 
necessary habit of testing truth by facts, truth which 
is unseen must not be made less compelling to the 
child's will than facts which are seen. 

In later childhood the keenness of the senses and 
increased power of handling objects carefully make it 
the time for first-hand acquaintance with the world of 
nature, and the accurate gathering of scientific infor- 
mation. The collecting instinct and the avi(Jity for 



64 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

stories, together with her undiminished power of 
dramatic imagination (or entering into imagined situa- 
tions personally) make it possible for the little girl of 
ten to be at home in the wide world. Objects from 
far corners of the earth make her eager to know the 
life of the people who made them. What do little girls 
in India do all day? How do they eat and sleep and 
work and play? What are their houses like? How are 
the trees and fields and flowers they see different from 
ours? What have I to share? What can I do to make 
children in other countries happier ? This is a natural 
series of interests developing from instinctive curiosity 
about people and delight in activity, to breadth of 
knowledge and social helpfulness. These are interests 
that are still to be reckoned on and used in adolescence ; 
but if they are used and directed in later childhood, 
much has been gained. 

An Educational Problem of Interests. Children from 
four to eight frequently, and from nine to twelve occa- 
sionally, show marked preference for the companion- 
ship of individuals or groups of the opposite sex. If 
this is accepted in a perfecely matter-of-fact way and 
no suggestions given, it will pretty certainly prove to 
be based either on like interests or on response to some 
personal quality which may or may not be in itself a 
sex-characteristic. The antagonism and repulsion 
which boys and girls normally show for each other in 
later childhood is based similarly on diversity of inter- 
ests and habits. These may, to be sure, possibly be of 
themselves sex-differences, but in all this there is nor- 
mally no sex-consciousness. The little girl (or boy) 
who uses the terms or manners of courtship is either 
abnormally precocious or the poor little victim of 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 65 

grown-up folly. Teaching a little girl to coquette, and 
to treat little boys as sweethearts, and teasing her 
about her beaux, is exactly the same sort of immoral 
vulgarity as teaching the baby boy to swear. For the 
amusement of grown-up people of perverted taste, 
habits that undo character are foisted upon the help- 
less child. 

It is true that the thirst for information, about both 
facts and relationships, early impels questions as to 
the origin of life and as to differences betw^een the sexes. 
It is only the mystery and evasion in the information 
elicited that provokes prurient curiosity. Sexual 
responses can be evoked in small children, but so can 
pertness, lawless disobedience, and other undesirable 
reactions, if the stimuli are supplied by ignorant or 
foolish persons. They are not more "natural" than 
the uncanny sharpness in self-defense shown by the 
street gamin, which we deplore as the result of wrong 
conditions. 

Education of the Will. It is charged by some social 
workers of wide experience that "the modern woman 
is not adequate. She is subnormal nervously, deficient 
in muscular coordinations, and, because of these de- 
fects, lacking in mental and moral stability, despite 
brilliancy of intellect and tenderness of conscience." 
Workers with fallen girls find it "not difficult to create 
in them the desire to do right. They are still responsive 
to ideals, but they have no wills with which to follow 
ideals. . . . Even among women with unusual moral 
force it is difficult to find one whose nerves do not at 
some time betray her in exasperating ways." ^ This 
writer thinks that feminine irritability, lack of inhibi- 

' The Play Life of Girls. Beulah Kennard, Pittsburgh Playground ABSociation. 



66 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

tion, bursts of nervous energy, neurasthenia, and 
hysteria are due to "arrested development rather than 
to overstimulation. . . . Checked in play, her motor 
activities fall below the normal and her motor mem- 
ories soon follow." 

The author also shows that since imagination must 
use some material, what is lacking in first-hand expe- 
rience is supplied by sentimental fiction; while the 
nervous energy which should direct motor activity 
seeks a new outlet in emotion and sensational excite- 
ment. The conclusion of this worker in public play- 
grounds and in vocational education of girls in depart- 
ment stores, is that : "Lack of good, sound, hearty mus- 
cular play'' in childhood is the cause of the "sensa- 
tional affectability, irritability, and lack of mental and 
emotional poise, lack of muscular coordination, and 
defective inhibition" undeniable of many women of 
our day. 

The present years are rapidly accumulating gain in 
improved facilities for muscular activity and play for 
girls. The "women of our day" had a childhood ham- 
pered by far more conventionalities than have the 
women who are now girls, or children. Yet it is a 
question how many times a healthy little girl's spon- 
taneous and wholesome activities are still checked by 
cautions against being "unladylike" or "tomboyish." 
It is a question for still more serious consideration how 
much of the interest in persons rather than things, and 
in feeling rather than doing, established by scientific 
experiments as undeniably feminine characteristics at 
the present time, is due to early denial of the girl's 
real instincts. When the strain of adolescence comes, 
the differences in a girl's training show more plainly, 



PREPAKING FOR ADOLESCENCE 67 

and the faulty habits she has acquired cause her to be 
known as impulsive, vacillating, weak, headstrong, or 
stubborn. 

Educational Use of Bodily Activity. The little girl has 
the right to achieve a healthy will, governed by right 
ideals and affections. Energy of will in adolescence is 
conditioned by the fund of vitality which childhood 
brings to girlhood, but this vitality is more than mere 
bodily vigor. It includes bounding health, but also a 
knowledge of self and environment gained by first- 
hand tests, nerve poise, accuracy of bodily control, effi- 
ciency in action. How is all this to be secured? By 
appropriate activity. The instinctive responses from 
among which a girl can choose depend for their scope 
and strength upon the variety of situations which have 
stimulated them. These usable experiences are also 
dependent upon the stimuli having been presented 
when the appropriate instincts were most ready to use 
them. If a girl is to deal with a world of realities, she 
needs to experiment with real things, not merely read 
about them or play with those that are selected for her. 
Her knowledge of persons must also come from expe- 
rience with real persons. "Team work" and the ability 
to put one's best effort into a project, and to lose the 
game without losing self-control, do not come in soli- 
tude, or by reading stories. Boys win these abilities 
by their own activity in competitive games and in 
using tools and materials — activity that is denied to 
most girls. That fewer girls than boys have these 
particular abilities therefore seems to indicate not so 
much difference in original nature as in opportunities. 

Education for "Womanliness." It is probable that 
during childhood most sex-differences in activity are 



68 GIELHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

artificial. The average ten-year-old girl who has had 
a free chance and proper clothing can climb as high 
a tree, ''skin a cat** as neatly, "chin*' a bar as many 
times — yes, and bat a ball as far, as a boy of the same 
age. It is not certain that she can throw the ball as 
far, but she can skate as well. Indeed, the fact that 
they did not settle questions of superiority in quite as 
primitive fashion as their brothers was due, if the testi- 
mony of many older girls is not to be barred as unre- 
liable memory, not to any difference in the fighting 
instinct, but to adult authority. There may, however, 
have been greater instinctive submission to that 
authority. If the girl is to have the vigor and poise 
and judgment she needs as much as the boy. her 
interests should be as active, varied, and objective 
as his. 

There will, of course, be great differences in the 
natural interests of individual girls, but during this 
first dozen years the child is developing a human indi- 
viduality. Sex distinctions need not be emphasized, 
for they cannot be vital until sex-differentiation takes 
place. All this is perfectly compatible with training 
in habits of modesty and ideals of womanliness. 
Modesty, self-reverence, pure-mindedness. and refrain- 
ing from too-familiar contact are surely desirable 
between children of the same sex. as well as between 
boys and girls. In later childhood it is essential that 
both boy and girl have an elementary but true concep- 
tion of the meaning of sex and of the development about 
to take place in them. But it is as essential for one as 
for the other, that nerves and muscles and ideas and 
judgments be strong and reliable from exercise with 
reality. 



PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE 69 

SUMMARY 

In preparing a girl child for the strain of adolescence 
one must depend upon the stimulus of her environment 
to bring her experiences, and upon educational laws 
to form her mental and physical habits. The satisfy- 
ingness or annoyingness of emotion is the strongest 
factor in making or breaking habits, or forming ideals. 
Ultimately the strongest motive for action according to 
high standards is in some relation of human affection. 
The new affections of adolescence may be strong enough 
to break a wrong habit, but this is wasteful. The wise 
builder of human life, to make his work effective from 
the start, must know what responses are possible in the 
developing girl. To attempt to explain the principles 
of food values to a three-year-old and leave her there- 
after the choice of her diet seems a mistake too absurd 
to be made. We know that the formation of right 
habits of eating depends upon the mother, to whom the 
little girPs instinctive response is affectionate obe- 
dience. But at twelve, when her dominant interest is in 
the reasons for things, many parents make an equally 
woeful mistake in attempting to control her life by 
habitual obedience or sheer parental authority. At six- 
teen, when her life is a misty dream of romance, the 
stimuli from which she will gain her experience will be 
different from those of childhood, but the same laws of 
education will apply at each different stage. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 45, 50, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 76, 77, 81, 
94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 103, 104, 111, 113, 121, 122, 123. 



PART II 
EARLY ADOLESCENCE 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 

Why "Adolescence" Has Been Used as a Masculine 
Noun. A few years ago, when educators began to real- 
ize that the boy or girl entering the teens was different 
from a child, and that the boy or girl in the late teens 
was different from a mature adult, the word "adoles- 
cence" became popular. Now, the individuals of this 
transition age who commonly thrust themselves most 
prominently into notice are boys; and those who 
studied and wrote and spoke most about this stage of 
growth were men, and their "inside information'^ came 
from their memories of the boyish point of view. Hence 
it happened that some time since, in a Southern Sunday 
school convention, the father of a large family, listen- 
ing to many discussions of "the adolescent," finally 
said, dryly: "I don't know much about this ^adoles- 
cence,' and I don't know whether gals is supposed to 
catch it too; but I do know that the gals is just as 
ornery as the boys, or a leetle more so." 

Anyone who has not the patience of complete under- 
standing is indeed apt to find the "ornery"-ness of a 
girl almost intolerable for a year or so. But if her self- 
assertiveness, obstinacy, unreasonableness, and vary- 
ing moods are hard on those who live with her, what 
about her own hardships in living with herself? 

Wide Variability of Adolescent Girls. Another rea- 
son why boys were earlier studied is that "boy nature" 

73 



74 GIKLHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

seems to be more calculable. Society has permitted 
boys to escape the barriers of conventionality in follow- 
ing their gregarious instincts, so their groupings are 
better developed and more democratic. Custom has 
encouraged, perhaps created, greater individualism in 
girls, for their socializing has been confined to smaller 
and less varied groups. The girl has had less necessity 
to modify her personal peculiarities, and usually fewer 
forces have acted upon her. But these forces, because 
they are fewer, have been the more intense in their 
effect. The result has so accentuated differences in 
temperament that a prominent educator of girls has 
said, "Any sentence that begins ^All girls^ is a lie." 

There is just one exception to this statement. "All 
girls," by the very fact of time, pass, whether slowly or 
rapidly, through certain physiological changes which, 
because they fundamentally affect the development of 
mind and character, must be given first consideration. 
These changes may be roughly divided into the "gross 
bodily" changes (of bones, muscles, glands, organs), 
and the "cerebral" (or those conditioning mental 
development). 

The Child-Personality Relatively Stable. During the 
last few years of childhood, a girPs growth is relatively 
slow. She has mastered practically all the coordina- 
tions of which her muscles are capable ; at least those 
she does use are well accustomed. When she learned 
to walk and talk, or to wipe dishes, or sew, the move- 
ments focused all her attention. She was acutely con- 
scious of how the muscles felt when they worked, and 
of just where on her body the contact with objects 
occurred. Learning was choosing the feelings of the 
movements that brought the right results. Many 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 75 

adjustments and contacts brought bumps, or pricks, or 
broken dishes, or punishments. Success and praise, or 
accident and blame, or ignorance and disappointment 
brought th^ instinctive tears or laughter, temper or 
fears, which at first were new sensations. But now 
the learning of these familiar movements is forgotten, 
and they are hardly "sensed" at all. Emotions are 
associated with appropriate causes. Her world is thor- 
oughly explored, and yields her hardly any new sensa- 
tions. If normal, healthy, well-disciplined, and sur- 
rounded by well-poised adults, she has few occasions 
for violent emotions. The slow growth of these later 
years, and the slow passing of time to a child, make 
her seem to herself and to us a very definite person- 
ality, whose relations to her world are constant. 

The Beginning of Adolescence. But surely, and some 
times suddenly, all this is changed. "Early adoles- 
cence" is the name given to the period of growth and 
ferment culminating in puberty. ^ Usually there occurs 
about the beginning of this period the most rapid 
growth of the whole body since babyhood. If muscles 
and bones kept pace with each other, it might not be 
so disconcerting; but nature's way is to concentrate 
growth energy first in one spot and then in another, 
and as bones stretch muscles too short for them, or 
muscles press against each other till bones and skin 
regain their proportion, the nerves report the tensions 
and pressure in sharp "growing pains." A new 
mechanics must be learned for getting the familiar 



1 "Puberty" is here applied to the relatively short period of growth of ^the gen- 
erative organs culminating in girls in the establishment of the menstrual period. In 
the United States the average age of girls at first menstruation is thirteen and one- 
half to fourteen and one-half years, which makes the period of "early adolescence" 
extend from about twelve to fourteen or fifteen. With individuals the age at which 
the changes begin, and their duration, vary widely. 



76 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

tasks done. Dishes drop because the arm overreaches. 
The girl stumbles because, as she complains, ^'my feet 
disappoint me so !" During this process of growth the 
sensations from the body force themselves acutely into 
consciousness. 

Besides, the body as a whole is in strange relation- 
ship to the familiar environment. A sudden difference 
of from two to six inches in the level of the plane of 
vision makes one literally "see life from a new angle.'' 
To draw the chair the customary distance from the 
table and upset the physical and social gravity of the 
entire circle by unexpected knee-impact is an experi- 
ence far more certain than "fear of the supernatural" 
to ]3roduce what William James called a "vertiginous 
baffling of the expectation." The girl is homesick to sit 
in her now impossible pet rocker. She is painfully 
conscious that everything is different, including her- 
self — and she is exhorted not to be self-conscious! 

Changes Due to "Somatic" Growth. This business of 

manufacturing new bone and muscle tissue is expen- 

ive of energy, but, curiously enough, it has to be 

arried on by heart and stomach and lungs that enlarge 

mt slowly in proportion. These organs can be made 

adequate to furnish needed foodstuff for building and 

to care for the increased waste only by much exercise 

to help the circulation, much water to help eliminate 

waste, and frequent rather than too hearty meals. The 

growing muscles are often loath to do their part, and 

their best encouragement is plenty of sleep, during 

which the stretched cells can rest, and the nerves grow 

to keep pace with them. If these helps are neglected, 

the hollow chest, muddy skin, and the weakness of the 

undernourished body bring discouraging failure to 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 77 

meet her own aesthetic or moral ambitions. To be lazy, 
and homely, and know it; to care dreadfully and yet 
not be able to help it, is tragedy indeed ! 

These changes are enough to cause tension, fatigue, 
and emotion, even though they differ from those of 
childhood only in rapidity and extent. But a far more 
fundamental change is taking place. 

Changes Due to Growth of "Reproductive" Cells. We 
have seen in a preceding chapter that the first step in 
the development of the embryo which grew into the 
girl child was the division of the germ cell with all its 
possibilities into "somatic" or body cells, and "germ 
plasm" or "reproductive cells," and that in the first 
years of life the individual is developed almost entirely 
from the "somatic" half. The rapid growth just de- 
scribed as taking place in this period is still that of 
the body, of the same "somatic" origin. The "reproduc- 
tive" part of the original germ also subdivides in the 
embryo, and the girl baby has the complete number of 
ova that will ripen throughout her life as a woman. 
These undergo comparatively little development 
through childhood, but are preserved like hid treasure 
in the rudimentary reproductive organs until the body 
of the individual shall have become adapted for self- 
support in its physical environment. The seemingly 
erratic growth of these last few years is preparing the 
body for its new inner developments. 

The contrast between the reproductive and the body 
cells is interesting. Of the latter the nerve cells 
develop most rapidly of all. Probably before birth 
most of the nerve cells that will ever be used by the 
adult are already formed, but they grow in size and 
in number of connections until long after the bone and 



78 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

muscle and other skeletal cells have their growth. This 
is because from the very moment of birth they are con- 
tinuously stimulated by sensory stimuli, both from 
without the body and from its own inward activities. 
Normally the reproductive cells and their special nerve 
connections are very little stimulated until their de- 
velopment begins, a year or two before puberty. Then 
this wonderful part of the individual, the other part 
that is literally parent, twin, and child, begins its 
delayed growth. In contrast with the billions of cells 
in the adult body, the number of ova in the ovary at 
puberty can be counted within the one hundred thou- 
sand limit. No more are ever formed, and these are 
ripened and discharged throughout the thirty years or 
so of reproductive life. In connection with this prep- 
aration for the ripening of the germ cells occur other 
changes in the body itself. Those most noticeable are 
the increased size of the generative organs proper, the 
consequent alteration in shape and proportion of the 
pelvis and deposits of reserve material in the form of 
fat, especially in the hips and breasts. 

The Functions of the Ovaries. The generative organs 
have two uses. One is to carry the germ plasm from 
which is to come the next generation. In woman this 
plasm is in the form of ovules, carried by the ovaries. 
The uterus, tubes, lacteal glands, and other parts of 
the female generative organs are accessory to the needs 
of motherhood. 2 The ovaries are the organs of primary 
importance. Their other use is to secrete certain sub- 
stances which are sent, by way of the blood, to every 



2 It is here taken for granted that any conscientious leader of girlhood will have 
the simple knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene given by such books 
as Numbers 99, 107, 109, 110. What is given in the text is introduced solely for 
its psychological and educational bearing. 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 79 

organ and tissue of the body. These substances have 
been named, from a Greek word which means "mes- 
senger," hormones. Any organ in the body which 
secretes some substance needed by other organs is 
called a gland. For instance, the liver secretes bile, 
and glands in the mouth secrete saliva, and these sub- 
stances are needed in digestion. 

The glands just named have little tubes called ducts 
through which their secretion is poured into the mouth 
or the intestines, to be mixed with the food. Because 
of these ducts, the use of these glands was easily 
learned early in the history of physiology. Other 
glands are "ductless," and their use was hardly sus- 
pected until nearly the middle of the last century. 
Such an one is the thyroid, which when enlarged forms 
what is called goiter. When its secretion is too great 
in quantity it overstimulates certain centers till nerv- 
ous and heart diseases follow. When its secretion is 
deficient or lacking, grave disorders of skin and bones 
follow; and if the disorder begins in childhood, the 
person becomes the dwarf, perhaps imbecile, known as 
a "cretin." 

There are many of these "ductless glands," and about 
many of them there is still little known except that 
they are indispensable for normal health. It is quite 
certain that the different chemicals which some of 
them secrete are necessary to stimulate the growth of 
different tissues. It has been found that some of these 
glands are always diseased when certain bone diseases 
are present. The normal growth in size of body, then, 
is due to the stimulation from hormones manufactured 
by certain glands and brought by the blood to every 
tissue which needs them. Why do children ever stop 



80 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

growing? Because other hormones, from other glands, 
neutralize these stimuli. 

The ovaries are the "ductless glands" in the female 
(corresponding to the testicles in the male) whose 
internal secretions stimulate the body to produce the 
distinctive marks of sex-difference, and also balance 
whatever stimulus to skeletal growth the blood has 
heretofore been carrying about. Thereafter bone and 
muscle and other tissues are renewed as they wear out, 
but do not increase in stature. The blood vessels and 
digestive apparatus finally catch up with the muscles 
and bones, and a whole network of nerves, connecting 
the newly developed organs with the brain, enlarges 
to be ready for its task. Groups of central cells in the 
brain "ripen" so as to take care of the new sensations, 
send the new motor orders, and connect the new system 
with those already in use. 

Conditions Affecting Nervous Sensitivity. It is a 
matter of everyday observation that anyone's sensitive- 
ness to sights and sounds and temperatures and odors 
varies with the state of health, or fatigue, or hunger, 
or is affected by drugs. So also varies the ability to 
control the muscles in work that requires endurance, 
or nicety of skill. A sound that is not consciously 
heard when one is well and busy becomes excruciating 
torture to the fever-tossed patient. Tracing the hair- 
like lines in metal pattern or embroidery may be easy 
enough customarily, and yet after a sleepless night 
even with the same amount of illumination the line 
may become invisible at intervals, or the hand slip. 
The psychologists call this variation a "raising" or 
"lowering" of the "threshold of stimulation" or the 
"threshold of discrimination." The person who sleeps 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 81 

soundly on as his alarm clock repeats its noisy assault 
on his auditory nerves shows that their "threshold of 
stimulation" is much above its normal plane. If when 
he awakes he feels annoyance at the persistent flatting 
of scales practiced on the violin next door, he shows 
that his "threshold of discrimination" for pitch is 
lower than his neighbor's. Similarly, one may sit plac- 
idly through various clangings and hangings of street- 
cars or nearby machinery, when work and digestion are 
going on smoothl}^ But if dyspepsia gnaws, or threads 
snarl, or subordinates spoil a day's work by stupid 
failure to follow directions, a sudden slam of a door 
or a creaking window blind will find a much lowered 
"threshold of stimulation" throughout the sensori- 
motor path. The evidence of this is the violent start 
or the excessive energy with which the offending catch 
is fastened. Certain drugs and anesthetics raise the 
threshold so high that no stimulus will produce a re- 
sponse during their influence. 

Effect of Early Adolescent Changes on the Nervous 
System. The result of the clash of the hormones of 
growth and sex causes unstable equilibrium through- 
out the girl's entire organism, but often its most 
marked effect is that on the nerve and brain cells. The 
development of criminality which often takes place at 
this age in children who have hitherto been perfectly 
normal is sometimes the result of a disturbance of this 
balance so great as to become permanent. It is to be 
doubted if this result would take place if the social 
environment were intelligently controlled so that 
stimulation of the hyper-sensitive reflex "paths" could 
be eliminated. For example, while under normal con- 
ditions sociability is most helpful, under certain forms 



S2 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of abnormal physiological disturbance ''the surface of 
social contact should be reduced.'' In pathological 
cases of cruelty, to animals or to other children, it has 
usually been found that the threshold of stimulation 
of many of the senses had been raised so high that cuts 
which caused profuse bleeding were not felt as painful. 
A similar raising of the threshold in the brain cells 
involved in connections of "images," or "associations 
of ideas," made it impossible for the child to associate 
the idea of pain in others with the blows or w^ounds 
which he inflicted. Such are, of course, extreme cases ; 
and at the other extreme are those in which the thresh- 
old of stimulation or of discrimination is so lowered 
that commonplace situations quickly start associations 
of ideas which arouse reflexes of nausea, of terror or 
rage, of affection, or sex-passion. 

Physiological Effect of Environment. The physiolog- 
ical development of girlhood is further complicated by 
the high pressure of modern life, from which persons 
of no age may now escape. Growth and emotion both 
make drains upon vitality, and more sleep than cus- 
tomary in later childhood is imperative. But the girl 
i« beginning her high school and must study under the 
pressure of her new ambitions, or she leaves home to 
work in a factory, where she meets the added tension 
of "speeding up" to keep her job. Work conflning 
indoors, close adjustments of the eyes and of the small 
muscles, and emotional stimulation, impoverish or 
overstimulate the chemical activities of all the glands. 
Much outdoor life, vigorous exercise of the large 
muscles, and wholesome fun are essential. 

But instead the hours out of schoolroom or factory 
are all too often spent at the crowded and stuffy 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 83 

where the wavering film strains the eyes and 
stimulates the imagination to intensest emotions. 
Even if the number of moving-picture evenings is 
parentally regulated, the new social sphere into which 
school or wage-earning life now admits the girl intro- 
duces her to modern dances; or else, contented and 
proud that she "loves to read/' we fail to realize that 
the literature most accessible to her, in popular maga- 
zines, is largely sentimental and unreal, if not sug- 
gestive and salacious. The suggestion of the magazine 
story or the "newest'' dance may not be understood by 
her innocent mind, but either one will usually stimu- 
late the newly grown instincts as inevitably as putting 
a "pacifier" in a baby's mouth stimulates the sucking 
reflex. 

The frequent occurrence of "nerves" in young girls 
in the upper grammar and early high-school grades is 
a condition for which the school as such is not respon- 
sible.^ But it is a fact which calls for intelligent 
cooperation between parents and school authorities, 
to make the home and school and recreation conditions 
as wholesome as they may be with intelligent care, and 
to make them elastic enough to allow for the incalcu- 
lable variations of individual development during this 
period. If the girl has sufficient and suitable food, all 
the sleep she can possibly accomplish, plenty of ener- 
getic exercise out of doors, the stimulation of whole- 
some companionship, and tasks that do not tax finer 
adjustments of senses or muscles; and if school work 
is not made nerve-straining by attempts to cover a 
specified amount on pain of losing the good opinion of 
oneself, one's teachers and one's fellows, a fair amount 

« Compare I^ng, Number 22, pp. 59-64, 182ff. 



84 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of good hard study will usually be enjoyed, and satis- 
factory progress made. 

SUMMARY 

Early adolescence is a period of the most profound 
physiological changes. These changes by their rapid- 
ity or extent may disturb any or all of the functions 
of the body and brain. Bodily adjustment is further 
complicated at this time by the development of the 
reproductive organs, and by the effect of the chemical 
secretions of the ovaries upon all the various organs 
and tissues. One result of these newly active hor- 
mones is the maturing of certain nerve connections and 
brain centers. These are the basis of the "delayed 
instincts" of sex or race, which are fundamental in 
developing an individual child into a participating 
member of society. The physical regime of food, cloth- 
ing, sleep, and exercise, as well as the social stimuli 
of recreation and companionship, must therefore be 
intelligently adjusted to help meet the unusual de- 
mands and preserve health. Without duly compre- 
hending these physiological factors it is impossible to 
find intelligent or effective solutions for the social, edu- 
cational, and moral problems of the young girl. If 
health is preserved, the necessary physiological adjust- 
ments can take place successfully and in good time, 
and conditions are then present for social, educational, 
and moral adjustment also. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 22, 32, 33, (59), 69, 99, 109, 111, 114, 115, 119. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 

While mother is kept busy letting down skirts and 
letting out or taking in belts or seams, the patience 
of the family and of teachers is often taxed by unex- 
pected lapses of memory, or tantrums of temper, or 
bursts of tears. The girl herself has a double per- 
plexity. She is as much surprised at these unusual 
happenings as anyone else, and after they have hap- 
pened she has a "whole lot of feelings" which are even 
stranger than those which accompanied the exceed- 
ingly "observable'^ behavior which puzzled her elders. 

Mental and Emotional Confusion. The state of mind 
accompanying this break-up of everything accustomed 
is a "buzzing, blooming confusion" worse than that of 
the new-born babe to whom James applied the epithet, 
although it is of a different sort. The changes in rela- 
tive and actual weight and space relations cause altered 
pressures on the sense organs within the body, and 
with the quickened blood flow and its different chem- 
ical composition change the customary sensations. 
These are combined with the sensations due to the dif- 
ferent adjustment of the rapidly growing body to every- 
thing outside it. The senses are more acute,^ and odors 
and tastes heretofore received with indifference are 
now quite unbearable. 



1 Tables from Gilbert's studies of school children, showing the increased sensi- 
tivity and discrimination in touch, weight, taste, smell, color vision, etc., quoted 
by Thomdike, in Educational Psychology, vol. iii, pp. 275ff. 

85 



8Q GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

The development of nerve connections, and the ripen- 
ing stimulation of dormant brain centers, mean new 
interests and new instincts, which replace or mix with 
the old with the bewildering changes of a kaleidoscope. 
Such a familiar "situation" as Tom Smith looking at 
her, or not looking at her, brings entirely novel 
"responses" — a blush one day, the next a coy glance 
and an impulse to see if her hair ribbon is just right, 
and on the third an indecision whether to be good 
friends or to snub him. Many new "paths" are equally 
ready to connect, and each leads to a whole train of 
ideas and habits. Both the bodily sensations and 
the new instinctive responses are, or cause, emotions — 
well-known, brand-new, or mixed ! 

/The personality which the little girl had achieved 
\^as incomplete and rudimentary, but it was a whole 
—"integrated," to borrow an apt term from psychology. 
In her far-off babyhood she had learned that her toes 
were herself as the socks she pulled from them were 
not; and that her teeth were "tied in, they belong to 
me." "Mine" and "not-mine" were distinguished a 
little later than the "me" and "not-me." Her rights 
and privileges and duties in the enlarging social group 
of home and school had become clearly defined. Her 
affections had found outlet in thoughtfulness and 
unselfish service. If well instructed, her standards 
of "right" and "wrong" were clear as black and white. 
Her interests, her duties, and her faults wxre freely 
talked over with her by her elders. The queer gnaw- 
ing under her heart that came when baby took the 
room in mother's lap was inelegantly but frankly 
referred to as "having her nose out of joint." She did 
not speak of tkat oppressive weight on her chest after 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 87 

her first deliberately planned lie, but father knew with- 
out being told, and gravely talked to her about her 
conscience. From the earache to her stage fright over 
her first "piece" in school, she experienced nothing but 
what others showed they had already felt and under- 
stood. 

In her quest for information, there was always some 
one who knew, even when father or mother were too 
"tired" or "busy" — or ignorant, or foolish — to answer. 
If they were wise, she has had her normal curiosity 
concerning life's beginnings satisfied, and knows the 
reason for the physiological changes now taking place 
within her. 

The "Unknown duantity." But now the thing that 
puzzles and troubles her is that she does not feel at all 
acquainted with herself. In fact, herself is so unex- 
pectedly different at incalculable intervals, that she 
despairs of ever getting acquainted again. People 
seem to expect her to be the same little girl, or else a 
grown-up person, very different from any self she has 
yet discovered. Now, if other persons had ever had 
such an experience, wouldn't they say something about 
it? And if they haven't, what is the use of trying to 
tell them? If they know what fun it is to make Tom 
do any "stunt," no matter what, by — well, she can't 
tell how, hut she can make him every time! — well, why 
are they so shocked ? Either they never knew this deli- 
cious sense of power, or they have it no longer, and are 
jealous of her because she has it. 

Or if her new sense of romance and beauty make 
her overconscious of her own gawkiness, how can she 
bear to put into words that which would only make 
people laugh at her? Even the rare girl who does not 



88 GIELHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

feel herself either misunderstood or not understood, 
will probably lack powers of self -analysis to give any- 
one her confidence if she would. So the girl at this 
period is usually mute regarding herself. Wise and 
happy the friend who recognizes the difference between 
inarticulateness and indifference. 

The Self in Transition. What is really happening is 
that she is entering upon the possibility of becoming a 
factor in the life of the race. She is not yet a woman, 
but the sex life has awakened in her. What causes her 
difficulty is the process of growing from child into a 
woman, and being neither the one nor the other. Her 
life is no longer a clearly defined whole, for its bound- 
aries are widening rapidly, and all the past and present 
and future are dissolved together. The making whole 
again (or ^'reintegration of the personality'') is the 
task of the next stage of her growth. At present she 
is clinging desperately to the conviction that, strange 
and incalculable as her changing self may be, it is still 
herself. Other persons have a new interest and a new 
importance in her eyes, and she feels that she herself 
should now have an equal new importance in their eyes. 

Self-Assertion. This instinctive desire for recogni- 
tion as an equal member of society dominates her 
responses to the new inner and outer situations, and 
is the cause of the self-assertiveness so prominent dur- 
ing these years. This assertiveness is one of the phe- 
nomena most exasperating to those intimately con- 
cerned. While its basis is her new consciousness, due 
to the new forces at work within her, it is interpreted 
by her as justified by her years of experience. She 
knows all that the family knows, and can do things 
without being told. Surely, her opinions are worth 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 89 

consideration. Her self-assertion is a passionate pro- 
test against the obtuseness of those who persist in 
treating her as a child. She is partly right and partly 
wrong. The new personality should be respected, but 
it has no right to dominate the family. If the family 
life is serene and considerate between its grown-up 
members, there is likely to be little friction in the new 
adjustment, when her share of forbearance is placed 
squarely before her sense of fair play. 

It is in the home, indeed, that the new self meets the 
most decisive, and usually the first, determination of 
the new relationships toward the world. From sheer 
force of inner growth the self takes a new attitude 
toward the family. Individual temperament and the 
course of events combine to determine whether the new 
attitude is a sudden crystallization, memorable as a 
distinct milestone of experience ; or whether it is grad- 
ually achieved, and the girl knows that she has the dif- 
ferent attitude, though she may not know when she 
took it. It is a loyalty that identifies self with family 
because one chooses rather than because one must. 
Often the occasion, or the result, of this changed atti- 
tude is a voluntary sacrifice for the family advantage. 
"I am not going to high school this fall," quietly says 
the oldest daughter on the farm. "There are two little 
sisters under three years, and I am old enough to give 
this year to mother." Another says: "You did not 
know that Mr. Gilbert was going to fail and be unable 
to pay you, father, when you promised me the piano. 
I can practice at Cousin Lettie's another year." 

Individual Variability. Now, the nervous make-up of 
either one of these girls may impel her to "take every- 
thing hard," and so there may have been days or weeks 



90 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of battle before she came to her decision. In this case 
the decision itself releases the nerve tension, and there 
is a rebound of light-heartedness, and an almost deliri- 
ous rapture over the appreciation shown her. On the 
other hand, there are plenty of girls whose nerves of 
impression and expression always connect without 
delay or tension, and whose only check upon imme- 
diate action is the habit of considering whether an 
action is right or wise. To such, to put together the 
idea of mother's need or the family financial stress is to 
make, the offer. The sacrifice is not less, nor is there 
less pleasure in father's and mother's grateful appre- 
ciation ; but she would say with honest surprise, "Why, 
who wouldn't?" The difference is not in moral develop- 
ment of character, but in the temperamental emotional 
accompaniments, which depend upon the "original 
nature" of the nerve connections as to speed and ease, 
modified by her general health, or fatigue, and her 
habits of thought and emotion. 

Causes and Extent of Variability. Individuals vary 
in the manner just indicated, at any age throughout 
life. But this variability (more often called by the 
uncomplimentary terms of inconsistency, heedlessness, 
or changeableness) is at a maximum at the age 
under consideration. This is due to the varying 
"height of threshold" previously noted as caused by 
the varying chemistry of the body at this time, act- 
ing upon the difference of the individual's equipment 
of sense-organs and nerve centers and motor paths, 
and the readiness of connection between them. There 
are carefully compiled statistics^ which show that 



2 Gilbert and others, quoted by Thorndike, Educational Psychology, vol. iii, 
pp. 194ff. and 272-275.. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOKS 91 

girls are most variable^ during the two years nearest 
puberty. 

Tests made in school marks in various grammar 
grades and through high school go to establish the same 
fact. Girls are more variable than boys during these 
two years in almost every ability of mind or sense or 
muscle. Before and after this age the opposite is true. 
At least part of the explanation of this condition is 
probably in the fact that girls go through the physical 
and mental upset of puberty at an earlier age than 
boys, and there seems to be a difference in the rate of 
mental growth corresponding to that of physiological 
development. 

While these experiments show that girls compared 
with one another as a whole vary so greatly in their 
abilities in any given test, no records were found mea- 
suring the amount of variability in the performance of 
the same test by the same girl within successive short 
periods. Experience, however, thou^ without the 
accuracy of experiment, points to a similar range. 
Within the individual various interests wake up and 



3 That is, if a thousand boys and a thousand girls of ten years of age, or an equal 
number of sixteen-year-olds, or of adult men and women, were tested as to the 
time it would take each to cross out all the a's in the same page of print; or to add 
columns of figmes within their abihty; to write the opposites of a list of words like 
"good," "slow," or to make as many dots as possible in fifteen seconds with a 
pencil on a piece of paper, the results would be something hke this: The younger 
and older boys and the men would show some individuals in each thousand that 
had crossed fewer a's, added fewer figures correctly, written fewer words, and 
made fewer dots, in the given times, than any girl or woman of their own age. 
There would also be some in each group who had done the work more swiftly than 
any girl or woman in the corresponding groups. The same thing would be true 
in a different kind of tests. If each were given a set of weights, all of the same 
size but with different amounts of lead concealed so that one would weigh fifty 
grams and others forty-six, forty-eight, fifty-two and fifty-four grams, and each 
were asked to teU which of them, taken at random and often repeating those of the 
same weight, were heavier or Kghter than the fifty-gram standard, individual boys 
and men would make more mistakes and fewer mistakes than the girls and women. 
But if each of these tests were given to a thousand boys and a thousand girls of 
thirteen, or of fourteen, it would be f ound^that, in general, the results would be direct- 
ly opposite from those at any other given age. That is, some girls would make more 
mistakes and some would make fewer, some would do the work faster and some 
would do it slower, than any boy. 



92 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

absorb her alternately. The significance of this is 
the opportunity for individualizing in taste and skill. 
It is not a matter of willfulness, but of differing phys- 
ical ability, that makes the girl so ardently espouse one 
activity to-day and a different one to-morrow. 

These investigations show also that in the same two 
years there is great increase in delicacy of sense dis- 
crimination. To mother or cook it may seem that the 
most characteristic facial expression of this age is the 
lifted nose. The girl ^'cannot eat" this, and ^'cannot 
bear the smell of" that. The menagerie and the zoo 
are unthinkable, to small brother's disappointment and 
disgusted charge of being "finicky." Colors chosen for 
wearing apparel are different from those of a year or 
two ago, and are a matter of vital importance. But she 
really does see and smell more than she ever did before, 
and more than her small brother does. This nicety of 
discrimination decreases slightly in succeeding years, 
and then increases gradually to its greatest fineness 
in the late teens and early twenties, where its import- 
ance will be later indicated. 

Educational Use of the Facts of Variability. The 
knowledge of these facts may help us to be patient with 
her finicalness, while at the same time we help her 
avoid the beginning of annoying habits. It should 
also make us alert to use the new powers for educative 
appreciation of art galleries and the beauties of nature, 
rather than let them be spoiled by the garish appeal of 
circuses, amusement parks, and Sunday supplements. 

During this early period of adolescence, if persistent 
effort in any one direction is insisted upon, the enlarg- 
ing body may be easily fatigued, or the mind reach the 
stage of boredom. Either condition may result in 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 93 

associating with the given activity an emotional tone 
of dislike which will cause the girl to avoid it in after 
years. But there is, too, a superabundant energy that 
must effervesce. The difficulty here is that muscular 
responses change in quality and power faster than 
their control is acquired. The laugh or call that grates 
on sensitive ears is the result of contractions that feel 
the same as those of a year earlier, and its loudness is 
a surprise to the girl herself. The childish caress that 
was a comfort to the recipient is now a bear-hug that 
almost deprives its object of breath. But the uncon- 
scious repulse of its muscular violence is too apt to be 
interpreted by the self-conscious girl as a repulse of 
the affection which prompted it. 

This noisiness and boisteroushess can never be coped 
with by "don'ts.'' The energy must have an outlet, and 
it can be naturally and effectively coupled with the 
new sensitiveness to beauty and grace and charm, and 
the increased desire for power. If others admire "that 
most excellent thing in a woman," a pleasing, well- 
modulated voice, or an erect carriage, or a light and 
springy tread, the girl's attention will be directed to 
their desirability. She can be led to see that these 
matters are within her power to achieve, even while the 
uneven growth of her muscles is a temporary hin 
drance. Then the new instinctive desires will work 
with the family against the heavy, stamping footsteps, 
the piercing yell, or the sharp whine, and the humped 
shoulder and uneven hips.^ If, however, she is only 
blamed for these undesirable things, self-assertiveness 
may work negatively, and emphasize them the more. 

Confusion in Experiences and Ideas. Many of the 

* See Bibliography, Number 114. 



94 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

characteristics of this period which are most notice- 
able to others are matters of unconsciousness or indif- 
ference to the girl herself, except during the vexatious 
moments when she is being scolded for them. That 
which does engage her attention is of far greater 
importance. The girl of twelve or fourteen is daily 
meeting new experiences in her own conduct and that 
of others. A new experience results in a new idea. 
Now, the mind is uncomfortable with unrelated partic- 
ular ideas, and its first response to the stimulus of a 
new idea is, therefore, an attempt to relate it to some 
"general idea" which holds together a group of ideas 
already in the mind. That is the reason for the habit 
of "hasty generalization" common to most of us, 
whereby we attempt to explain facts without ascertain- 
ing all the essentials. To formulate a new general idea 
involves waiting for new experiences, and an interval 
of puzzling and seeking, both for facts and for rela- 
tions, which is "annoying to the organism" of most 
individuals. 

It is this desire to relate the new at once to the old, 
and to enjoy a sense of familiarity with our ideas, which 
makes the little child insist so strenuously upon the 
same wording of the story, and delight in its repetition 
of phrases. It is a form of the "satisfyingness" of 
habit. By this instinctive relating of the ideas result- 
ing from experiences it comes to pass that in later 
childhood associations have been formed between all 
the ideas in the child's realm of experience as firmly as 
in the adult mind. This has been proved by an inter- 
esting study.^ 

^ A test frequently \ised by psychologists, for various purposes, is to speak a 
word, or show a printed word, and have the person being tested write or speak 
the first word it suggests to him. This is called "free association," and the time 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 95 

The young girl cannot help attempting to relate 
her new experiences to something, and naturally the 
only ideas to which she can relate them are those 
she already has. She will not attempt to form new 
generalizations until accumulating experiences prove 
that those she has are inadequate. Her childhood 
standards of conduct are but white and black of 
right and wrong, knowing no merciful grays of exten- 
uating circumstances. But her new sense of her- 
self (egotism, we sometimes bluntly name it) places 
the conduct of others toward herself on a different 
plane from that between adults and children. 
"Teacher promised to be there, and she wasn't. I'll 
never count on her again," she declares with the vehe- 
mence of personal grievance. She does not consider 
the possibility of illness, of no telephone connection, 
and various other circumstances which afterward prove 
to have been the reason for the failure to keep the an- 
ticipated engagement. While no one escapes from this 
relentless measuring by her absolute though limited 
standards, she releases herself least of all. Only she 
does not tell the public of her own so freely as of 
others' shortcomings. 

taken for response is naturally different from that for a "controlled association," 
when the word has to be met in a specified way (such as a noun with an adjective, 
or a verb with one of opposite meaning) . Extensive tests (see A Study of Associa- 
tion in Children, by Isabel R. Rosanoff and H. A. Rosanoff, Psychological Review, 
vol. XX (1913), pp. 43-89) of this "free association time" have been made on 
hundreds of individuals, for each year of age from four until maturity, using the 
same list of one hundred common words. There were few four-year-olds of normal 
intelligence who would not reply to most of these words with a different one. 
"Woman" might bring "mamma" without hesitation; and "red" might bring a 
quick response of "ball" or a slower one of "dress" or "flower," as the case might 
be. But the time taken to secure a spoken response to the entire list grew less 
with each year of age until eleven years, when it required on the average as short 
a time aa with the average adult. And many of the words wUl receive the same 
reply at eleven as at forty. In the majority of either age, "green" brings the 
response "grass," in about the same fraction of a second. Some of the words 
receive a wide range of responses in the later years. The aged botanist, or the 
schoolgirl who has just been studying for an examination in that subject, may 
respond to "green" with the word "chlorophyll," instead of "grass," but the time 
will not be very different. 



96 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Problems of the New Experiences: Authority. This is 
a problem that must not be bungled. Her standards 
are based on authority. That authority is the pro- 
nouncement of parent or teacher on the right and 
wrong of conduct as conduct was interpreted by child- 
ish experience. When the infallibility of these author- 
ities is questioned her standards are shattered, and she 
is without rudder or compass for moral direction in 
the fathomless sea of new experiences. The right pro- 
cedure is to help her find a higher standard, a more 
inclusive law; and to use her developing powers of 
reason to fit the new generalizations to the old in a 
larger whole, as well as to find the appropriate gen- 
eral law for each new particular of conduct. Her 
keenness of moral judgment, which is not yet blunted 
by the habit of casuistry, is a valuable foundation for 
her further moral education. The most hopeless 
problem encountered by the social worker is the girl 
who enters this period without standards. 

Doubt and Recklessness. When the girl's ideas are 
overturned by finding persons, who had been her ideals, 
indulging in lies of convenience, dishonesties of work, 
and evasions of responsibility, she will almost surely 
be submerged in the first great period of doubt or skep- 
ticism. There are conflicting standards, conflicting 
authorities, and people are not what they seem to be. 
^'Is anything to be believed?'' How can she "know 
what to believe"? This skepticism is the cause of 
much of her recklessness. She has been told that cer- 
tain consequences will follow certain actions and by 
experimental test some of these dire results have not 
followed. Her only sure means of knowing what is 
true, and what, like the bug-a-boos of babyhood, has 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 97 

been invented to serve the convenience of older people, 
is to "try it and see." "Experience is a dear school," 
runs the proverb, but probably the "fools" were adoles- 
cents who, having found the "others" untrustworthy in 
some precepts, would have none of them. It is hard 
for inexperience to discriminate. 

These experiments with life may be very mild and 
harmless, or they may deal with primeval forces that 
can wreck the girl, body and soul. Habit, tempera- 
ment, and opportunity vary. The essentials for safety 
are that she be met with absolute candor, and that she 
k know some absolutely trustworthy persons. No con- 
i ' cealment and no temporizing will stand her scornful 
gaze. The truth about the facts she seeks, the reasons 
for the laws laid down must be honestly given. Yet 
l^her questioning will be concrete, and she usually has 
f sense and delicacy enough to realize that there are 
ranges of experience still beyond her, and things that 
are holy, to be treated with reverence. Her doubt is 
not irreverent, but there is irreverence in the flippancy 
that treats nothing as worthy of serious question. 

Flippancy and Crude Humor. Perhaps more oftenl 
than we realize the irreverence or flippancy which so| 
shocks us is due to lack of experience. That which is 
to us tender, or awe-inspiring, or holy, lacks in the 
girl's life the background of associations which make 
it mean so much to us. This is akin to one of the 
most puzzling factors in the interactions of groups 
of fast-growing girls, or girls and boys, their crude and 
incalculable sense of humor. Philosophers of every 
age have tried to explain the essence of the comic, and 
modern psychologists have attempted to find the com- 
mon element in the varied stimuli to laughter. But it 



98 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

still remains true, as in the days of the Latin proverb, 
'^De gusWbus non disputandum.'- Yet while "there is 
no accounting for tastes" in a given individual, certain 
foods are liked by most people, and others by fewer, 
and restaurants are able to gauge their menus accord- 
ingly. Just which flavors will appeal most alluringly 
to any individual can no more be forecast than why he 
should like them can be explained. So occurrences 
that are excruciatingly funny to an entire eighth grade 
may seem amazingly stupid to the teacher in charge. 
Yet the failure to know the right moment to laugh with 
a group is as fatal as to permit unrestrained hilarity 
at the wrong time. That knowledge must depend upon 
an insight which will determine whether the laugh is 
from good humor or bad. 

Those who have tried to explain what makes any- 
thing seem funny have chosen various elements as 
essential. Some place it in discovering an element of 
incongruity where none is intended. The antics of 
the school clown gain their most exquisite humor from 
the utter unconsciousness of the teacher behind whose 
back they are performed. It is the incongruity with 
the teacher's seriousness which makes the rather stupid 
grimaces seem funny to the pupils. This factor prob- 
ably explains the perennial appeal to the schoolboy or 
girl of a piece of paper or string pinned to the back of 
an unconscious victim. Others find the essential humor 
in the amused person's sense of superiority to the 
person or situation which is in some way ridiculous. 
The boys and girls safely standing or sitting doubtless 
feel superior to the luckless one whose chair has just 
been pulled out from beneath his confiding thighs. A 
bit of lint or a smear of chalk on the teacher's new suit. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 99 

or his turned up coat collar, are incongruous with the 
bearing which indicates a sense of being well dressed. 
But the funniest part of it to the pupils is that as 
they are not putting forth any pretensions to being 
"dressed up," a "slight disorder in the dress" does 
not distress them as it will the teacher when he finds 
it out, and they are mentally superior to that distress. 
Again, the comic has been found in the resemblance 
of a thing to a person, or a person to a thing. The 
handkerchief doll on a girl's desk is given a pose that 
suggests some familiar person, and it convulses the 
entire schoolroom. A girl is said to "walk like a pair 
of scissors," or "look like a kangaroo," and those who 
hear it ever thereafter see something "funny" in that 
girl. 

Probably all these elements, and many more, enter 
into situations which we admit to be funny. The 
reason that such different things make the comic 
appeal to the adult and to the early adolescent is 
largely due to the differences in their experiences. The 
youngsters' experience is so very limited that what is 
commonplace to us may seem to them most incongru- 
ous. It is another form of that which makes the humor 
of different nationalities mutually difficult to compre- 
hend. Older people, too, have had more experience of 
what persons and things may do, and do not separate 
them so distinctly. And again, we who are older have 
experienced more humiliations, and appreciate the 
philosophy of the child who said, "A little girl fell off 
a chair at the party, and all the other little girls 
laughed, 'cept me." 

"That was very sweet of you, dear." 

"Yes, I was the little girl that fell." 



100 GIRLHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

It is a little easier to put ourselves iuto the place 
of the unconscious victim. And yet the girl who laughs 
loudest at the discomfiture of another may be pleased 
largely because that other is finding out how it feels! 
But probably the chief element in the boisterous 
laughter is the unstable equilibrium of the sensori- 
motor connections. Emotional balance is easily upset. 
A situation need not be intensely pleasing; if it is 
only not unpleasing, the response may be an exagger- 
ated activity of the laughter reflex. 

Temper. With some girls the emotional upset fre- 
quently takes a different direction. The response to 
annoyance is often anger or rage. While any situa- 
tion which stimulates this group of reflexes is always 
sharply classified by consciousness as annoying, yet 
some of the effects of the reflexes themselves are so 
immediately "satisfying to the organism" that no effort 
is made to discontinue them. Indeed, it sometimes 
seems as though occasions for the emotion were pur- 
posely sought. It is the paradoxical character and 
complexity of causes and effects in this group of emo- 
tions which makes the problem of their control so difS- 
cult to girl and educator alike. 

Painstaking scientific study^ has given us the key- 
to this paradox, and its educational corollaries help 
to solve the educational problem involved. The -'satis- 
fyingness" of anger is rooted in the sense of freedom 
and power which it gives. The rousing of the emotion 
actually increases muscular energy available in the 
limbs and speeds up the connection of some of the 
central brain cells. This consciousness of energies 
loosed for action and of the power of prompt coordina- 

"See Bibliography, Number 75. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 101 

tion is exhilarating. The real increase of muscular 
and coordinating energy is, however, gained only at the 
expense of the vital processes, and the mechanism 
which "throws the lever" for the emergency can hold it 
over only for a limited time. Then it must fly back, 
and exhaustion is felt. 

Every one has experienced the emotion. Its fre- 
quency in any individual depends partly upon nervous 
make-up, and partly upon ideals largely social in their 
origin. To some the first exhilaration is so keenly 
pleasing as to overbalance the unpleasingness of the 
after effects. Others are terrified by the violence of 
their own energy, or find the depression which follows 
too painful to be risked if it can be avoided. These 
are what might be called the sensory elements in the 
temperaments of different girls, and the educator must 
take account of them. The popular judgment that a 
"quick temper'' and a "generous, warm-hearted dis- 
position" go together may be based on a real correla- 
tion of the rate at which different sorts of nerve 
changes take place in the same person. The impulsive 
girl is as quick to change the use of her muscles from 
her own concerns to service for others as to turn vital 
energy from digesting her dinner to defending her teas- 
ingly threatened possessions. So she may have run the 
errand and returned before her placid and even-tem- 
pered sister, whose intentions were equally unselfish, 
has succeeded in getting the trend of her thought and 
muscles changed from the activity already engaging 
them. 

The swiftness of response to a situation may be 
involuntary and only partly modifiable by effort. What 
is under voluntary control is the use to which the invol- 



102 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

untarily released energy shall be put, and the elements 
in the stimulating situation to which attention shall 
be paid. An increase of muscular power is a challenge 
to do things worth doing. A girl can have the "belts 
and pulleys" of habit so fastened to a purpose as to 
utilize all the extra energy when it comes ; or she- can 
"let the wheels just whirl" in a tantrum of stamping, 
shaking, and sobbing. She can also build up in calmer 
moments the habit of associating the comfort and 
satisfaction of others as part of every situation. Was 
brother Bob's teasing sufficient reason for an anger 
tempest that disappointed mother and gave her a 
headache? Was chum's forgetting to bring back the 
book really worth all that fuss, and hurting her feel- 
ings? Did the general conversation contain a thrust 
at a "sensitive spot" ? After the "flare-up" did the rid- 
icule prove to have been unconscious and unintended? 
Then how foolish to pay the cost of exhaustion and 
remorse, when a generous attitude to other people's 
motives would have saved the whole scene. Self-con- 
trol must be won by different girls by different 
methods, but an understanding of the nature of these 
violent forces will make them less unruly. 

SUMMARY 

These are years of rapid changes in the girPs body 
and brain, causing new and unexpected sensations, 
instinct-acts, interests, and activities. The result is 
intense emotional excitement and bewildering confu- 
sion in ideas. To fortify her sense of identity in this 
confusion, and to secure the social recognition craved 
by the new instincts, the young girl is markedly self- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 103 

assertive. Her greatest problem is that of relating new 
experiences to each other and to the old. She must be 
so understood that the energy of these capricious, 
boisterous, finical, headstrong years may be con- 
served for the reconstruction which must soon follow. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 22, 28, 32, 58, 64, 69, 75, 79, 80, 94, 105, 109, 
111. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 

Whether the girl's mind understands it or not, her 
whole self now feels that she is in a new relation to 
the world of persons. Of course nothing is clear yet, 
for her life is in a process of differentiation. Spirit- 
ual life, like physical, comes to maturity by growing 
from the simple to the complex. The body, with its 
bones and muscles and viscera, its sense-organs and 
brain and nerves, develops from a single cell because 
as the germ grows and divides it differentiates. That 
is, each new cell has a smaller proportion of some ele- 
ments of the original life stuff, and a greater propor- 
tion of others. This differentiation continues with 
growth, until all the tissues are completed, ready for 
their final uses. 

Differentiation of Affections. A child's affections and 
personal relations are vigorous and vital, but still 
undifferentiated. The possibilities of sex life and affec- 
tion are present to some degree throughout childhood, 
and false education can stimulate them precociously. 
Those who wish to corrupt the child mind count unerr- 
ingly on the peculiar certainty of interest and response 
to sex suggestion. But in the child, sex is normally 
sleeping. In early adolescence it is tremendously 
awake and must be reckoned with, yet writers on 
adolescence frequently overemphasize the suddenness 

104 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 105 

of its appearance. The interests due to race instincts 
now grow with a rapidity which makes them seem a 
new phase of life, but they are only a development from 
the same root as the old but now distinct family affec- 
tions. Complete differentiation will not occur till 
later, and the vital instinct for motherhood and mating 
matures last of all. 

In this early adolescent period has begun a special 
growth in which lie possibilities of friendships and 
loyalties and all sorts of efforts and sacrifices, of per- 
sonal intimacies and civic relationships. From this 
indistinct mass of potential affections now emerge the 
new, absorbing personal interests of this period — the 
Boy, the girl Chum, and the Adoree. 

The Boy. Normally, the girl's new interest in the 
boy is in the species. If social environment or com- 
munity ideals tend to narrow her interest to any one 
specimen, the result is even more harmful than with 
the pre-adolescent girl. The average, healthy-minded 
young girl has this instinctive interest strongly enough 
developed so that she has numerous boy comrades. 
Against premature sentimentality in her relations 
toward them there is "safety in numbers." If her 
mental activity has developed faster than other 
factors, she is apt at this time to have special joy in 
competing with boy rivals for school and social honors. 
The anemic, neurotic, or emotional girl, or the one 
with wrong training, at this stage shows her lack of 
normality either by intensified sex-repellence, or by 
boisterous familiarity, sickly sentimentality, or clan- 
destine meetings. The goal, for both boys and girls, 
is a definite and dignified understanding of the mean- 
ing of sex ; the recognition that modern life postpones 



106 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the personal completion of its functions ; and then the 
frank and companionable acceptance of each other as 
human beings, with whom to work and study and play 
and grow up together. 

The Chum. The girl chum is the connecting link 
between the old interests and the new. As she is fre- 
quently one of childhood's playmates, or at least 
selected from the present circle of school friends, the 
basis of the intimacy is a feeling of shared experiences. 
With the active, objective-minded girl, this chum is 
probably a "pal" in all her adventures and escapades. 
With the more introspective, subjective type, she is the 
chosen confidante for the new and wonderful ideals 
and ambitions and emotions which no one else can 
understand. It is hard for a girl to think of her 
mother as having ever been different from what she is 
now. These heart-thumpings are a perfectly new expe- 
rience in the world; how could mother understand? 
The ador^e, on the other hand, is too wonderful a 
creature to be troubled with her small concerns, and 
so the chum becomes another self for the interchange 
of self-expression. If both girls are clean-minded, and 
unselfish enough not to monopolize time that be- 
longs to family and other friends, the chum is one 
of the most helpful and permanent interests of this 
period. 

The Adoree. While the familiar world of the home 
has become in one sense a new one through the adoles- 
cent girl's feeling toward it, the world outside the 
home begins to hold many new and fascinating figures. 
To her growing sensitiveness to details and contrasts, 
beauty, harmony, and grace make a new appeal. With 
all the energetic sturdiness of most growing girls of 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 107 

this age, there is nevertheless a peculiar responsive- 
ness to graciousness and charm of manner, and to 
beauty or "distinction'' of face and figure. Through 
her successive phases of hero-worship, the little girl, as 
we have seen, has been formulating her Ideal. Now as 
she enters this new adventure in living, there grows 
an inner certainty that this ideal woman must exist; 
and she must find her, and give her all the affection 
and loyalty that exalted character compels. 

A writer about girls in private secondary schools in 
the United States commented on her statistics, a few 
years ago, "52,649 ardent creatures, who must have 
somebody to adore!'' This phrase suggested to the 
present writer the coined word "ador^e," which will, 
therefore, be here used to signify the woman who is 
the object of the girl's idealizing affection. The emo- 
tion is normally compounded of wholesome affection, 
honest admiration for fine character, and the romantic 
glamour of experience for which the girl is herself 
a-tiptoe and a-tingling. It forms one of the strong- 
est motives in the girl's development. If accompanied 
by a self-respect which prevents "mushy sentimen- 
tality," and respect for the ador^e's rights which pre- 
vents monopolizing tendencies, the ardor of this affec- 
tion need not be feared. 

To a girl, "the object of this adoration is usually" 
a woman with "a character that commands respect, 
and shows the mystery of complete development, joined 
as a rule with sympathetic and gracious treatment. 
It is a passing phase, and involves the projection 
of an ideal to which the older person may in reality 
only remotely approximate." The recipient would be 
"deficient in intellect or character to treat the matter 



108 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

seriously or selfishly." i The fervent loyalty thus 
developed is a motive to be utilized in training the 
girl into habits of consideration and respect for the 
personality of others, and of cooperation with another 
for wider social purposes. The moral and educational 
possibilities and problems growing out of this relation- 
ship will thrust themselves upon our consideration 
again and again. 

The Early Adolescent's Adoree. Because there are 
some really vital needs which may be approached only 
by a trim, girlish figure with daintily cared-for hands, 
and boots that show a slender arch, at this stage in a 
girl's life her adoree is usually a young woman in early 
adolescence. Some day, ages hence, the girl shudder- 
ingly acknowledges to herself that she may have to be 
as old as — forty! But what she is voluntarily going 
to be — and she can hardly wait for the four or five 
birthdays to pass and bring her to the hither border 
of that enchanted land — is, a Young Lady ! 

A Young Lady is pretty and stylish and attractive 
and graceful and clever, and knows what to do and say 
to Young Men, and she may be engaged! In this vicar- 
ious form all the crude romantic dreaming finds its 
satisfaction. The sincere flattery of imitation can 
express itself only in the concrete, hence the adoree's 
unconscious mannerisms of speech, gait, and gesture 
may appear with startling faithfulness in copy or car- 
icature, and her favorite colors and sachet odors may 
be adopted ad nauseam. But whatever influence has 
a chance to beat itself into the girl's plastic brain and 
nerves for permanent character-building must manifest 
itself through some activity possible to her also. 

iThe Adolescent, J. W. Slaughter, London. 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 109 

"Character is caught, not taught," and so is personal 
daintiness; and so also is the sense of relative worth 
which perceives when tired mothers need the sacrifice 
of some of this same daintiness. Potato stains on the 
adoree's fingers may sometimes teach a needed lesson 
as nothing else could. 

The Young Girls' Social Grouping Contrasted with the 
Boys' Gang. Everything which has thus far been said 
of the interests of the girl might, with due changes, 
be repeated for the boy. He has the Girl, the Chum, 
and the Hero. With both youths and maidens these 
interests last, with varying incarnations, through 
much of life. But before the boy finds life not worth 
living without the Girl, and before he discusses the 
Universe with his one completely understanding Chum, 
during all the vitally formative period of early adoles- 
cence, first and foremost, "the law of the boy's life is 
loyalty to the gang." Does anything in the young 
girl's life correspond to the boy's gang? And "if not, 
why not?" 

When he ceases to worship his father, a boy forms a 
"gang" with other boys, because they want to do some- 
thing, and this takes cooperation. We are beginning 
to see that from time immemorial the little girl's edu- 
cation has made her lose some stages from her develop- 
ment. The taboo on active physical play has thrown 
her back on introspection. The things boys make and 
do require all their attention. But what girl has not 
mind enough to follow her piano lesson and her own 
romantic dreamings at the same time, or to embroider 
and listen to the gossip of grown-ups? She thus be- 
comes engrossed in her own self, her own thoughts, 
ambitions, and feelings. With these as her primary 



110 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

interests, companionship is sought for the purpose of 
expressing these inner attitudes, and for this, one com- 
rade at a time is enough ; more are embarrassing. The 
fact that in her late childhood she has customarily been 
deprived of habits of motor activity, and of cooperation 
in interests and projects entirely outside herself, has 
13revented the forming of habits of motor discharge 
which might mold the direction of the new energies. 
And so her creative impulses drain into dreaming 
instead of doing. 

But the new social impulse of this stage of develop- 
ment is too strong to be entirely submerged. She must 
have people about her, and at times plenty of them. 
Then it is that ^'cliques" are formed among several 
pairs of chums. Under the conditions of its formation, 
the group must needs be small. Habit quickly makes 
it an exclusive thing, and its pettiness becomes the 
despair of many a mother and teacher. Larger groups 
for definite activities are formed, but rarely at this 
age unless they are initiated by some leader and crys- 
tallized around her personality. Such a leader is 
usually the common adoree of the girls composing the 
group, although occasionally she may be a girl of 
their own age, with unusual personality and force of 
character. With the loss of the leader the group breaks 
up, and the activity is abandoned or followed only by 
certain of the girls as individuals. With the boy, on 
the contrary, the group is formed from a common 
impulse to activity ; the leader develops and retains his 
place by his merits and efficiency, and whatever the 
ideals of the gang may be, they are a by-product of its 
activities. The following crude diagrams express the 
difference. 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 111 

The Gang's Hold on the Boy 

Leader 




From every boy to the leader, via every other boy. If the leader drops out 
the solidarity of the gang pushes another leader to the front. 



The Girls' Grouping 

1^^ The Leaders 
Interest 




From every girl direct to the leader. The dotted lines indicate the weaker, 
reflected bond of interest of all the other girls in each individual because of 
her devotion to the common ador6e. 

The Explanation Found in Social Customs. The reason 
for the different development of the social grouping of 
bojs and girls lies far back of the immediate environ- 
ment. The way we look at many things in life seems 
to be as directly traceable to an unwritten legacy from 
the prehistoric past as the color of our hair or skin 



112 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

to the sun and winds which marked our ancestry in 
their original northern or tropical homes. A survey 
of the way the young girl's life has been regulated by 
society in the various stages of its development will 
help us to understand more clearly not only this but 
other of her social relationships. 

A few years ago a theory was widely current that 
treats the mental and physical stages of the individual 
as a "recapitulation" of the progress of the race 
through savagery, barbarism, chivalry, and feudalism. 
The "gang," according to this theory, is a repetition 
of the early barbarous tribe, in which loyalty to every 
member meant warfare against every one outside. 
Under the influence of this theory the present writer 
once^ called attention to the fact that when knights 
were gathered at their Round Table, or organizing 
resistance to the common enemy, the maidens were 
gathered at the court of a noble lady, learning to weave 
and embroider, and to judge fairly of men. Now, no 
lady had her own daughters about her, but each maiden 
was sent to the castle of a lord more noble. Even the 
humblest peasant girl was sent out to service with 
some prosperous farmer's wife. About the same time 
the suggestion was made^ that because girls mature 
more rapidly, they are in this "feudal stage" while 
boys are still in the "barbarous stage." This seemed a 
plausible explanation of the fact that the girl is dream- 
ing in quietness, and adoring some woman outside her 
home circle while the boy is engrossed in the active 
pursuits of his gang. 

2 In a paper read before the Religious Education Association, Febraary, 1911, 
and published in abstract in Religious Education, August, 1911, and in full in The 
Sunday School Journal of the same date. 

^Article, "The Ethical Needs of Young Girls," by Clara E. Laughlin, published 
in Good Housekeeping, August, 1911. 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 113 

Further research, however, finds it more intelligible 
and more fruitful to explain the social development of 
the race through the actions resulting from universal 
instincts, than to explain these universal instincts in 
the individual as the inherited result of the actions of 
his ancestry in successive social stages. In the race, 
as in the individual, certain instincts are aroused 
earlier than others, because they are aecessary to keep 
the individual or the group alive. By the time that 
food and shelter and protection from wild beasts were 
achieved, the savage had little time for art or philos- 
ophy ! Many generations had to live and work, and the 
individuals composing these generations died, before 
primitive "society" was stable enough to permit even 
privileged chiefs and priests the leisure to "advance 
the sum of human knowledge," by experimenting with 
new ways of doing things. Yet new situations must 
have been constantly arising, and individuals must 
have varied then, as always, in the way they met similar 
situations. And so, slowly and without any conscious- 
ness of progress, life was constantly becoming richer 
and more complex. Each child that has been born 
since human life began has had more stimuli to act 
upon him than his parents had, and by this means 
human capacity has developed. And now, as then, 
every human life has capacities which have never been 
called into action, because the social environment has 
not stimulated them. 

\ One can obtain proof any day that individuals 
respond to situations for which their racial and social 
inheritance has not yet, according to the recapitula- 
tion theory, prepared them. An Alaska Indian girl has 
no "inherited experiences" of complex social relations 



114 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

in which the life of a large city must involve her. 
Yet when such an one is found working in a depart- 
ment store, she differs little in skill or efficiency from 
her Irish or Italian or Polish or German coworkers. 
There is no foundation in the dissimilar racial past 
of each for their actual similarity of adjustability to 
new conditions, both economic and social. And it is 
very probable that all of them will fix upon the same 
settlement worker or Association secretary as the 
object of their idealizing affection and adoration. It 
is evident, therefore, that to explain the life of an indi- 
vidual girl we need to know what opportunities are 
hers. If with widely different environment and oppor- 
tunities their responses are similar, we may count on 
having found one of the universal traits of girl nature. 
By such universal traits we may both interpret the past 
and direct the future. 

Girlhood In Racial History. In primitive times,* 
when our ancestors lived in huts or caves, and dressed 
in the skins of the animals they took for food, division 
of labor between men and women came about largely 
tljrough different relations to the child. Women 
stayed at home, bore and reared the children, built the 
huts, cooked the food, and tilled the ground. Men 
fought and hunted, made weapons, and raised cattle. 
The young man was ready for marriage as soon as he 
had size, strength, and skill to hunt and fight, while 
a dozen years of childhood were enough for the girl to 
acquire all the household arts of that simple life. It 
was generally in the various puberty institutions and 



* History of Human Marriage, E. Westermarckj Women of All Nations, Joyce 
and Thomas (London); Woman's Share in Primitive Cxilture, O. T. Mason; The 
Golden Bough, Frazer. 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 115 

initiation ceremonies^ which we find were practiced in 
those far-off days that she acquired her share of the 
inherited knowledge of the tribe, and proved her skill 
in the duties that were to be hers. Thus by the time 
menstruation was established, she was ready for almost 
immediate marriage. 

In all primitive life we find that custom put a 
'^taboo" on certain things and actions, which meant 
that they were not to be touched — usually on pain of 
death. It is difficult to put oneself into the frame of 
mind in which these various taboos arose, but careful 
students find that most things that were taboo were 
strange, unaccustomed, not understood. Perhaps this 
originated because strange human beings were more 
often enemies than friends, and because strange activ- 
ities were unskillfully performed and therefore unsuc- 
cessful; and so all that was unfamiliar was thought 
to be disastrous and "unlucky." For some reason the 
sexes were usually "taboo'' to each other; perhaps be- 
cause, as we have just seen, there was a division of 
labor along the line of the primitive functions of men 
and women, and the activities of each were therefore 
unfamiliar to the other.^ At any rate, no man after his 
initiation as an adult member of his tribe dared to 
associate with the women, and no child or woman could 
mingle with the men. To do a woman's work was 
beneath contempt, and in some tribes the men learned 
and spoke an entirely different language among them- 
selves. 

Fighting belonged to the men. As they had to hang 

6 See Bibliography, Number 15. 

'•See article, "The Sex Taboo," by Hugh A. Moran, in Social Hygiene, April, 
1916, which came to the writer's attention while this book was going through 
the press. 



116 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

together for success, the habit of organization devel- 
oped among them. Organization, being associated 
with the fighting activity of men, would become 
"taboo" to women. Yet the group activities of women 
needed some sort of coherence, and the education of 
girls was a community affair. It is significant of 
the universality and social usefulness of the instinctive 
admiration of the young girl for some older woman, 
that in the earliest tribes young girls entered the tribal 
group life through initiation administered by the "wise 
w^omen" of the tribe, during a period of separation 
from the family. In the different, feudal conditions of 
later history, it was this same instinct which aided in 
bringing the girl into her place in the social whole. 
Then, as now, with the dawning of race consciousness, 
the girl turned to some one outside the family ; and not 
first to the lover, but to the woman of broader expe- 
rience. Feminine adjustment to the social organiza- 
tion has thus far worked itself out almost wholly along 
the lines of personal devotion, and this is a factor 
which must always be utilized, although other instincts 
of which the girl is also possessed should also be util- 
ized. 

To-day the normal girl feels that in the dozen years 
during which family life has been all-sufiScient, she has 
become thoroughly acquainted with her mother's point 
of view, and she wants to see life through another and 
a different experience. If the mother has been wise, 
and continues to be so, she need not fear displacement. 
If the mother's life is full and rich, and she takes pains 
to admit her daughter to the fuller comradeship now 
possible, the girl's experiments with others will bring 
Iier back to the mother as the greatest heroine of all. 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 117 

Influence of Primitive Customs Upon Present Attitudes. 
In these days adult life varies in its demands upon 
women from those of the most complex civilizations to 
conditions in Asiatic village or African jungle hardly 
different from those of primitive times. Yet there is 
surprisingly little difference in the average age of 
puberty in girls all over the world."^ The existing dif- 
ferences seem due to the influences of climate, nutri- 
tion, exercise, and emotional stimulus, more than to 
civilization. Individual variation within one race is 
greater than the variation of averages between the 
races. ^ The effect of this misfit of nature and civiliza- 
tion increases the present problems of girlhood. The 
"race instincts,'' and all the impulses and emotions and 
passions which they arouse, need to be governed by a 
judgment and wisdom which can come only with a 
larger experience of life. Under the complicated con- 
ditions of our modern life, six to ten years are needed 
after puberty to make the girl capable of coping with 
them alone. Yet the instincts and passions are there, 
even though civilization ignores or attempts to sup- 
press them. From the "boy craze" to many forms of 



7 See tables quoted by Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, pp. 474-478 and by 
Mme. Dr. Francillon, La Pubert6 chez la femme. 

8 A possible reason for this narrow range of variation may be as follows: Human 
beings have always varied in every characteristic, and human Ufe has always been 
shaped in part by the conditions under which it lived. Individuals who were too 
small to cope with wild beasts or hostile tribes would perish, while growth beyond 
a certain convenient size and weight has been limited by food supply and mechan- 
ical factors. As with stature so with other characteristics, including the age of 
arrival at puberty. If girls could bear children while they were very small and 
weak, they would die, and so would the children. Those who remained incapable 
of child-bearing for too long a time after they were able to do the work of the other 
women of the tribe would have fewer children to inherit the characteristic of late 
puberty; and if their husbands desired children, they might become angry and 
make way with the wives who thus differed from the average. And so the slow 
process of selection for utility to the race established an age of puberty in girls 
which was, on the whole, most useful. Nattire changes some of her patterns very 
slowly, and we can hardly expect her to keep pace with our present rapid artificial 
change in environment. (For the general theory underlying this explanation, see 
Conn, The Method of Evolution, pp. 83-85 and 304-313; and Thorndike, Edu- 
cational Psychology, vol. i, pp. 252-254, 257-259.) 



118 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

early immoralities, the normal or abnormal manifesta- 
tions of these instincts in the early adolescent prove 
how irrepressible they are. 

But in those primitive times in which the appearance 
of puberty was not too early for the immediate accept- 
ance of its functions, the social group regulated the 
consequent relations. The girl's new powers were 
recognized by religious rites and social ceremonies, and 
she entered at once upon her new duties. In many 
tribes, as we have seen, all duties of women were 
entirely ^^taboo^' to men. It is not impossible, if we go 
back in thought to the conditions of their life, to see 
how this "taboo," like many other ideas, grew and 
enlarged through successive generations. Many ideas 
and practices have been preserved by the weight of 
custom long after the reason for them has ceased to 
exist, and even after their origin has been forgotten. 
Even in our day many of the beliefs of the early times 
still survive and have great power, in spite of their 
ludicrous unreasonableness. Wearing a horse-chestnut 
to prevent rheumatism, and terror at breaking a mirror, 
are instances of such survivals. Akin to these super- 
stitions is the present "taboo'' of the recognition of 
dawning womanhood, and the shame-faced silence or 
vulgar jest at its manifestations in the innocent social 
relations of boys and girls, as well as toward the sacred 
intimacies which belong to married life. 

SUMMARY 

The key to the girPs life in this yeasty period is her 
interest in persons. Affection and interest have here- 
tofore been centered in the family. The new physio- 



PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS 119 

logical and psychological developments cause the differ- 
entiation of instinctive interest into three new and 
absorbing channels — the Boy, the Chum, and the 
Ador^e. The first is normally general rather than 
specific — boys rather than a particular boy — unless 
interfered with by social attitudes reflecting primitive 
customs. The other two personal relationships are 
intensely concrete and individualistic. A great lack in 
the customary opportunities of the girl at this period 
is her development by wider social cooperation for 
distinctly active and objective ends, such as the boy 
has worked out in the "gang." 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 1, 4, 15, (17), (18), 30, 32, 52, 55, 101, 111. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS AND 

METHODS 

*-. 

''I am going to have pink, and two ruffles:' 

''Edithe, where is my hair ribbon? Indeed, I loon't 
wear that old crinkled thing to school !" 

"Gee whiz I John Jones, if yon aren't the limit! Cnt 
that ont I" 

"Mother, you ought to hold the top crust of the bread 
toward you if you want to cut it thin. Mrs. Smith 
showed me how she gets it so beautifully even." 

Mother may be wise enough not to say: "Yes, dear, 
I taught Mrs. Smith how to cut bread, and I've been 
trying for two years to get you to do it that way. I'm 
glad it has permeated." She may reprove or merely 
sigh over the slang and the selfishness. But every one 
in the house with a girl in her earliest teens is acutely 
and continuously conscious of her presence. Her per- 
sonality is pervasive ; not subtly and elusively like mi- 
gnonette, but penetratingly and unmistakably, like 
onions. Every one who comes in contact with her is 
conscious of problems in connection with her, prob- 
lems that cannot be ignored or forgotten. 

The Fundamental Problems and Fundamental Means of 
Solution. The problems which early adolescence brings 
may be summed up under two heads : the new self and 
the new world of the self's relations. The new self 
is assertive, energetic, variable, critical and cruel, 

120 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 121 

revolutionary, skeptical, emotional, daringly experi- 
mental, and reckless of consequences. The new world 
is a wider social whole, a realm of romance and 
imagination, of unexplored places and unachieved 
exploits, and of humdrum and inefficient common- 
places of church and family, which need only her direc- 
tion and control, she is sure, to be made much more 
satisfactory. Its chief interests, as we have seen, are 
the perfect understander, the Chum ; the perfect incar- 
nation of ideal womanhood, the Adoree; and the "per- 
fect nuisance," and slave, and delight — the Boy. 

The means by which those who have the girFs con- 
fidence and respect may help her are persons, ideals, 
and activities. Persons, within and without her family, 
affect her only because they are Ideals Incarnate, or 
the opposite thereof. It is fatherhood, motherhood, 
manhood, womanhood, that the girl is measuring in her 
father and mother, the pastor and school principal, the 
teacher in grade and Sunday school class, the Camp 
Fire guardian, big Cousin Tom, and chum's college 
sister. Ideals of self and of service come from concrete 
persons, in life or in books. They become effective 
through her own activities, many and varied. And 
without these activities, the Ideals will stay in the 
dream world, instead of being wrought into her own 
character. 

Holding in mind the racial and social significance 
of each of these factors as outlined in previous 
chapters, we may now take up a few illustrative com- 
binations of problems and methods. 

The New Self and the Family. An altered self-con- 
sciousness, and consequently a new attitude toward 
the family, takes place in every adolescent (boy or 



122 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

girl), and usually early in adolescence. It may be 
gradual or sudden, remembered or unremembered, but 
it is a factor to be counted on. A girl may face an 
issue which forces a square recognition that she can 
put herself, bodily or in sympathies, outside the family 
circle by the way she chooses. Yet even if she chooses 
selfishly in some smaller things, in practically every 
case where the issue is big enough, or clear enough to 
be recognized as an issue, she does choose with the 
family. She may put it off, and let the family consider 
her still a little girl and choose for her, but that is a 
recognition of their mutual rights as one family. This 
fact is a help in solving the moral problems which 
develop from modern complications of family life. 

One of these is the changed attitude of the parent 
toward the child, which has removed the safeguard of 
authority at this critical time without providing an 
adequate substitute. The experiences shared with her 
parents during the (to her) so long period of child- 
hood put her in her own estimation on a par with them. 
The superior school training of the average young girl 
over that of her parents gives to her new sense of self- 
importance a weapon against which, in a clash of wills, 
many parents feel helpless. The new awakening is 
one in which personal relations are supreme. Guid- 
ance can come only from the adult person who has her 
respect and affection, and who shows understanding 
sympathy. Such a person can help both girl and 
parents to a more normal relation, by an appreci- 
ation of the relative worth of different kinds of knowl- 
edge. 

Another such problem is encountered by the girl 
whose home life differs in its ideals from those of the 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 123 

community. The bridging of this chasm between con- 
flicting standards is one of the greatest difficulties met 
by the friend of the '^American girl in a foreign home" 
(as one of them described herself). But the Amer- 
ican "lady friend" can help the sensitive little Italian 
girl to see why the push cart and the wash tub belong 
under the heading "things to be proud of/' because of 
the love and sacrifice and ambition they represent. 
Who brought her to America? And from whom has 
she the love of beauty, and the quick mind that learns 
the American standard? Who, then, should be loving 
and patient and respectful at home, even when the 
older people insist on violating every principle of 
hygiene she has learned at public school and settle- 
ment ? For her family's sake, she need not be ashamed 
of a standard of living above which her family is ena- 
bling her to rise in her coming womanhood. 

The New Self and Authority. The girl's attitude 
toward constituted authority is a puzzling one, being 
a contradictory mixture of comprehensive revolt and 
of genuine admiration for that which is strong enough 
to compel the obedience of her rebellious self. The key 
is found in her ideals. Persons who win her respect 
must be adequate to their responsibilities as she sees 
them. Listen to the illuminating comments on the new 
eighth-grade teacher: "She's awfully nice just to talk 
to, outside, and she's real interesting in class ; but she 
can't keep order. You ought to see the things we do! 
I'm real sorry for her sometimes." Or, "You just bet 
you have to study ! You don't dare fool with her. She's 
great !" Now note : There is a perfectly definite judg- 
ment as to the conduct appropriate in the school room, 
a definite placing of the responsibility for that conduct 



124 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

upon the teacher, and a corresponding estimate of the 
teacher's force of character. 

If you doubt the correctness of girls' ideals of 
behavior, make them responsible for it, with means for 
discharging their responsibility, and due accountability 
to final authority for results. The carrying out of this 
dynamic principle of education in the schoolroom is 
outside the field of this discussion. In the Sunday 
school it is one of the most fruitful of the methods that 
have made moral education an affair of present con- 
duct instead of information for future use ; while down 
through the generations wise homes have always 
developed womanly character through increasing 
responsibility. 

The Girl "Who Argues. The conscientious parent or 
teacher who is earnestly trying to meet the insistent 
demand for the reasons of things and of rules is apt 
to run upon a serious snag. Many a girl loves to argue. 
All her mental energy rejoices in a battle of wits. She 
can usually make her side of the argument quite 
unanswerable if the unwary opponent lets the matter 
get to a question of opinions. All the while she knows 
you are right if yon were clever enough to pick out the 
right major premise, and she pities or despises you 
for being worsted. ^^You must wear your rubbers 
because it may rain," is countered by "It isn't going 
to rain ; and if it should, my shoes are thick ; and none 
of the girls will wear them, and I'll look silly," ad inf. 
The chain of reasoning which can be mutually estab- 
lished, once for all, and make its conclusions quite 
undebatable, runs something like this: "If a family is 
to run smoothly and comfortably, there must be one 
final authority. Decisions by that authority may be 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 125 

made under advisement, but once made they are final. 
Between mother and children, it is the mother's judg- 
ment that is to be trusted. Like any one, she may 
sometimes make mistakes, but the inconveniences which 
follow those mistakes are not to be compared to the 
annoyances of wrangling. Mother's decisions are to 
be acted upon, not disputed." Or, put succinctly in 
the girl's own words, "What mother says, goes!" If 
this is the understood rule, facts may be brought to 
mother's attention to influence her decision, but the 
decision once made will be accepted with a respect 
much more satisfying to the girl's innate sense of fit- 
ness of things than her own triumph in a mere clash of 
preferences. 

Slang. A situation for which most teachers and 
many parents feel responsibility is the presence of 
slang in the girl's vocabulary. The character of the 
slang will at this time depend upon the boy associates 
and the chum, rather than on home usage. Some of it 
will later fall away as the seedling leaves do from 
plants; but there are two real dangers. One is in 
coarseness, the language that is vulgar and profane 
under guise of the picturesque; the other is that of 
habitually substituting a formula for an intelligent 
response to the remarks of others. Appreciation of the 
picturesque and unexpected, which is one basis of the 
slang habit, can be enlisted to secure real originality 
and variety. A girl is perfectly willing, yes, eager, to 
shock the proprieties of grammar and custom, but she 
does not like to feel that she is considered too stupid to 
be worth talking to. If conversation ceases when she 
can only interject "Sure!" and "I should worry," she 
may originate intelligent responses. 



126 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Giggling. G. Stanley Hall has aptly summed up an 
outstanding characteristic of the "budding girl" in 
the following passage :^ 

"The psychology of giggling, as far as it has been 
investigated, shows that it has many causes: a desire 
to please, to show a happy disposition, or perhaps they 
fancy or have been told that their smile or the noise 
they emit is becoming. Or, again, perhaps the giggle 
is a direct product of a vacuity of mind that leaves 
them at a loss what fit thing to say, and so they laugh 
because that is vastly easier than the brain work needed 
for a rational response. It is nowhere near as hard to 
laugh, when it is up to one to react socially, as to talk. 
It requires less effort, too, to cachinnate than to chatter 
ever so emptily. Moreover, it is a witching way of 
social intercourse, cements friendship, and is to con- 
versation what confectionery is to food. . . . The 
giggle mood is ephemeral, and the giggle age lasts but 
a very few years, although its vestiges may remain in 
some characteristic simper or automatism far on into 
maturity after every vestige of significance has van- 
ished from it." 

While much of this laughter of "pure silliness" is 
to be patiently borne with until growth and experience 
restore the balance of the girl's responses, the edu- 
cator's attitude must not be wholly passive at all times. 
There are some things which should never be laughed 
at, and the habit should never have a chance to start. 
Kindliness of heart must give the first response to any 
personal misfortune. Coarse and indecent jests must 
never, by their sometimes undeniable wit, obscure the 
mind to their soiling mud. It was long before adoles- 

1 Educational Problems, vol. ii, pp. 17ff. 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 127 

cence that one little girl was given a rule which 
she never forgot. Her mother was away, caring for 
a sick sister, and the child wrote her a letter, put- 
ting in parrot-like the jest she had heard from the 
kindly but coarse woman in whose charge she had 
been left. When the spelling and writing were sub- 
mitted to her father before the letter was sent, he 
said gravely and tenderly: "If father had ^run away 
with another woman,' it would have been wrong, 
wouldn't it ? And it would have made mother very sad. 
Never laugh at or make a joke of anything that 
would he wicked or sorrowful if it were true.'' Per- 
haps no better criterion of good taste could be for- 
mulated. 

The Ador^e As Educator. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, the adoree is an educator of prime importance, 
as well as a factor in the girl's general social (and 
hence educational) development. In cooperation with 
the home, this chosen leader can direct the girl's 
attention to the means by which she may achieve 
results she so admires. Even if the home offers little 
of sympathy or understanding, or is inadequate in 
its ideals, this woman can be sure that what she 
offers will be eagerly accepted. And when it comes 
to a reliable criterion of what is proper and popular 
with boys ! Mother is thought to be old-fashioned and 
undemonstrative, or to have forgotten her girlhood. 
If the teacher is an "old maid," she must perforce be 
either inexperienced or soured. Only the young lady, 
with numerous beaux or a fiance, is an adequate 
authority. Her actions are watched minutely as 
opportunity affords. How almost limitless her power 
if she sees it, and talks simply, earnestly, and unaffect- 



128 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

edly, on principles, about what "nice" girls do and 
do not do, and why. 

Problems of Personal Standards and Intimate Informa- 
tion. Many who have this influence with very young 
girls and the willingness and desire to use it, are help- 
less to find words to explain the principles on which 
they habitually act. They find masses of facts in the 
printed information available to parents and teachers, 
accompanying the recent agitation for "sex instruc- 
tion." In fact, certain physiological and pathological 
facts may be more familiar to some of the young girls 
than to the adoree herself. This flood of informa- 
tion does not of itself indicate any advance in moral 
education. Moral education implies ability to con- 
trol oneself, to keep one's course straight and true 
to the ideal. Information is essential but not suffi- 
cient; there must be motive and purpose and stead- 
fastness. How are this motive and ability to be taught ? 
So great an expert as Dr. Richard Cabot,^ of Boston, 
insists that "how to tell" cannot be told. However, 
it is the testimony of many who are skilled that the 
experience of others helped them to acquire their 
skill. So the following paragraphs, based upon 
ways that have worked with real girls, may prove 
helpful. 

The teacher or other adoree rightly takes for granted 
that it is the mother's right and privilege to impart the 
physiological facts and their intimate, personal appli- 
cation. To the unmothered girl the mother's place 
must be taken by the woman who comes most closely 
into the girl's life. In childhood the girl should have 
information regarding the beginnings of life and the 

* Bibliography, Number 97, The Christian Approach to Social Morality, p. 5. 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 129 

simple facts of motherhood and fatherhood,^ and be- 
fore she enters her teens, of the process and signifi- 
cance of menstruation. As to the time and the fullness 
of information to be given, individual children vary 
so much in interest and curiosity that only this general 
rule can be given : Every question should he anstvered 
when it arises, fully enough to satisfy^ hut not to 
arouse, curiosity. Any evasion stimulates further 
wondering and unwholesome pondering. And the 
information should be always scientifically accurate. 
"Beauty" is not "lent'' to the subject by sentimental 
vagueness ; it is beautiful of itself, if it is treated in a 
frank, dignified, and reverent way. Very simple 
answers are sufflcient for the little child, but they must 
be truthful as far as they go. It is well to remember 
here the principle of teaching, that one unknown thing 
cannot be explained by another that is also unknown.* 
At the very beginning of adolescence, before puberty is 
reached, the girl should know the anatomy and physiol- 
ogy of the other sex and the purpose of the sex rela- 
tion, simply and straightforwardly, so that it may be 
in her mind clean and wholesome as a foundation for 
all the moral and social principles that must be built 
upon it. 

"The Consecration of the Affections." While the physi- 
ological is rightly kept sacred to the intimacies of the 
family, the more general principles of conduct are 
strengthened by public opinion, especially as repre- 
sented by the women, young and mature, whom the girl 



3 A little girl having listened eagerly to the story of how she came to be, confined 
in the telling to the part of motherhood only, burst out, in tears, "Then isn't father 
any relation to me?" To observant childhood the partnership of procreation is 
as natural and easily understood as the beginning from the egg, and birth. 

* See a deUghtful article in The Survey for April, 1914: "Some Inf'mation for 
Mother," since reprinted. Bibhographj^ Number 100. 



130 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

most admires. As experiences or intellectual interests 
bring it in naturally, the meaning of heredity and the 
importance of selecting character in the one who is to 
share her future children may be freely discussed. The 
safe-guarding of the girl is to be accomplished by the 
"consecration of the affections" — her own and the boys' 
— not by fear of "arousing men's evil passions." The 
young girl should know that the love that makes a 
man willing to spend his life working to support a 
woman and her children is a tremendous force. She 
has read stories enough to realize that a man will sacri- 
fice his own life in guarding the life or honor of his 
wife or sweetheart; she should understand that this 
tremendous power can go wrong/ just as one's mind 
can go insane, or as fire out of bounds is destruction 
instead of warmth and energy. She must realize that 
men who have diseased affections, like those who have 
diseased minds, are dangerous, and must be given no 
occasion to do harm. When father or brother says, 
"Don't go with that boy," or "Have nothing to do with 
that man," it may be that he is morally unbalanced in 
this one thing, or perhaps that something else in his 
character is lacking. There are men who have so lost 
control of this strongest emotion that in their un- 
guarded presence no young girl is safe. Her very pres- 
ence makes them want to do her harm, just as an insane 
man might try to kill a little child. But do not unduly 
emphasize the morbid facts, lest her mind become 
morbid. It is a tragic fact that some girls are firmly 
convinced that "all men are bad." But there are others 
who think that their parents have such a conviction, 
and so when an individual boy is prohibited they dis- 
count the warning as due to a morbid notion. 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 131 

Social Ideals and "Good Form." The young girPs pos- 
itive concern is to keep herself clean and worthy of the 
clean man who will some day woo her, and to help the 
boys who are her friends to keep clean and strong. 
At this age ideals are not abstract principles of be- 
havior, but, rather, the concrete behavior itself. 
Explanations of the moral principles involved are often 
so tiresome that their immediate effect is to stimulate 
one to do the thing that will smash the principle! 
But the girl at this age does want to be correct — to 
"know how." That "our set does not do that" will 
often have more immediate force in deportment than a 
whole book of ethics. Mrs. Lamoreaux quotes^ a four- 
teen-year-old girl who was devoutly thankful she had 
"been bom a Democrat, an Allopath, and a Baptist!" 
To utilize this feeling of superiority in impressing 
"good form" is often more effective than to dwell on 
the moral side of the issue. The habits of modesty and 
good-breeding are formed, and the habit tides over many 
moral crises. The simple statement that "this is the 
way to do this," from the young woman who is her 
chosen authority, is worth hours of arguing on the part 
of a self-constituted director. 

"Spooning." But at any time the girl is apt to 
demand reasons for "good form"; and they must be 
good reasons too ! There are two reasons why "spoon- 
ing" is wrong as well as vulgar : it uses the symbol of 
a great thing irreverently, and it wastes something 
which cannot be replaced. The word "God" is a sym- 
bol (as all names are symbols) which stands for the 
greatest Being in the universe. The tiny child uses 
the name familiarly, but in prayer, or in affection- 
s' The Unfolding Life. 



132 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

ate explanation of things, and that is not irreverent. 
Swearing is irreverent and vulgar, not because the 
name of God is bad, but because swearing is joining 
the name of the great Good Being with wrong and 
wicked feelings. A young officer of the United States 
marines refused the pillow tossed at his feet by a 
young lady sitting on her porch. It was decorated 
with the American flag; and he smilingly said, ^'I've 
flogged men for getting their feet mixed up with that 
flag." A kiss, a hug, a "love pat," any caress is a sym- 
bol of affection. The family affection is the deepest 
there is, and caresses are natural between any members 
of a family. Little children call forth a very real affec- 
tion from most adults. But when a man and a woman, 
not related in the same family, kiss each other, it 
should mean that they have an affection so deep that 
they plan to form a new home and family together. 

The affection of girl chums for each other also 
expresses itself in caresses, although the more active 
and healthy their mutual interests the less time will be 
spent in what the boys scornfully refer to as "holding 
each other's hands." For boys and girls to use the 
symbol of affection without the affection is profanity. 
To use it as the expression of a "chummy" friendliness 
or "brother-and-sister" affection, though innocent 
enough in intent, is to deal carelessly with a powerful 
stimulus to the more serious kind of affection between 
the sexes, which should be left until young manhood 
and young womanhood. If that kind of affection is 
wasted in driblets of experimentation during these 
earlier years, then when the time for real love comes 
there is likely to be little more than a repetition of the 
shallow loves already carelessly awakened. No girl 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 133 

likes to think of the treasure which her Prince Charm- 
ing should bring her as in the possession of other girls, 
some of it here and some of it there. And if she is at 
all a decent sort, she does not want to rob either her 
Prince or some other girl. Even a badly boy-crazed 
girl has seen the sense in this reasoning, and de- 
cided that she need be neither "common" nor a prude, 
but a frank good comrade to all the nice boys she 
knew. 

Understanding Boys. The girl without brothers is 
apt to have queer ideas about boys, either thinking 
them absolutely different from girls — rough, insensi- 
tive, and devoid of affection — or not recognizing that 
there is a distinct difference in their ways of expressing 
interest, affection, and ideals. Every girl needs a 
chance to become well acquainted with many boys, 
and to share each other's interests is good for both. 
It is absolutely essential that no girl should feel that 
her interest in boys is resented in her home, or that it 
is a matter for any secrecy whatever. A wholesome, 
matter-of-fact attitude on the part of her family and 
grownup friends is the best preventive of silliness and 
sentimentality. 

One of the greatest needs of the very young girl is 
a concrete standard of manhood. In Annie Fellowes 
Johnston's exquisite parable of the Three Weavers 
(which every lover of girls should learn to tell), after 
the Little Colonel has repeated the story to her father, 
she says: "And now. Papa Jack, give me my yard- 
stick." Happy the girl who is her father's chum, or 
who has a big brother who can serve as her "yard- 
stick." In one of O Henry's pathetic stories of a little 
shop girl, the ideal she had woven around a newspaper 



134 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

picture of Lord Kitchener served to keep her, even 
through partial starvation, from the hunter. 

Reading. There must be brief mention here of the 
power of books. Whether biography or fiction, the 
influence is twofold. The girl is forming ideals of 
manhood and womanhood, and she is making the 
romance personal to herself. A worker with girls who 
made several informal tests in large groups and con- 
ferences found that, except for those who lived near 
Mount Holyoke or Wellesley, few had ever heard of 
Mary Lyon or Alice Freeman Palmer, while nearly 
every one could give a pretty full account of Evelyn 
Nesbit Thaw. Probably the same proportion exists 
between those who know the humor and the fine honor 
of Mark Twain and Sir Walter Scott, and those whose 
ideas of wit and cleverness are shaped by Charlie 
Chaplin and "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.'' On the 
other hand, the harm of much of the fiction that per- 
fectly clean-minded girls recommend to one another 
from the libraries is not that it is wicked, or even 
vulgar ; but that the life depicted is unreal, because it 
consists of emotion instead of action, of sentiment 
instead of usefulness. This is also true of many of the 
moving-picture films that pass censorship. To tell a 
girl that she is reading too much fiction, and she 
"ought'' to read biography, will usually increase the 
undesired proportion. But loan her your precious 
copy of the biography of Alice Freeman Palmer, or the 
Life of Horace Tracy Pitkin or Hugh Beaver, or the 
story of Dr. Grenfell, or of Mary Lyon, or any other 
of the fascinating tales of real men and women who 
are worth knowing — such as Dr. Steiner's stories, or 
The Promised Land — and you will find she will share 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 135 

your pleasure, and be delighted at the subtle compli- 
ment to her taste. 

In selecting books to loan the young girl of to-day it 
must be remembered that she brings to the stories of 
yesterday a very different "apperceptive mass" from 
that of the girls for whom they were written. "When 
I was a young girl/' said a bright woman, "I ^simply 
adored' Charlotte Yonge's stories. So when a young 
girl asked me for ^a good story' I loaned her The Daisy 
Chain. When she returned it she said, 'Do you think 
that is a "proper" sort of story?' Remembering it as 
a tale of simple, happy home life, I said in amaze, 
'Why, what do you mean?' — 'Why! A consumptive 
mother and eleven children F^' Truly, the new ethics 
is gripping the rising generation ! Yet not as a recog- 
nized ethics but as an atmosphere. 

Activities. This long chapter must close with sug- 
gestions for suitable activities. The first demand is 
for pure fun. Outdoor and indoor athletics, selected 
with reference to her physical welfare, give the needed 
nerve poise by exercising the large muscles and yield 
the social and moral discipline of team play. An 
exhaustive and thoroughly trustworthy list of such 
athletic exercises and games is given in the Official 
Handbook of the Girls' Branch of the Public Schools 
Athletic League of New York City,^ prepared by ex- 
pert physical directors and physicians. Among these 
can be found some adaptable for almost any climate or 
natural advantage or limitation. As emphasized 
repeatedly, the great principle involved is that of the 
need for motor outlet for the energy imparted by the 
new growth and the new sensations accompanying it. 

"See Bibliography, Number 117. 



136 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

It might be tersely put as ^'motion vs. emotion" or 
tennis vs. tea-parties. In selecting exercises for these 
years, twelve to fifteen, it is to be remembered that the 
rapid growth of bones and muscles has put the girl 
back into the learning stage of the small child. The 
large muscles and mass coordinations are the ones to 
be used until proportions are readjusted. The more 
vigorously they are exercised, the more ready will the 
body be for the new functions soon to appear. One of 
the finest possible activities for this as for later ages 
is the long ^'hike" or 'cross country tramping. A girl 
who is sound in heart and lungs can play a better 
game of basket ball at thirteen, and with less possible 
danger, than at twenty. But there are some tests of 
endurance she ought not yet to attempt. Frequent 
change of activity is not only preferred, it is essential 
to health. 

Next to fun comes a healthy interest in knowing how 
to do all sorts of things. It is not reprehensible fickle- 
ness that makes a girl at this age soon tire of any one 
thing; it is growth fatigue. Besides, as one who has 
had much to do with teaching many kinds of handcraft 
said: ''No girl wants to be a fool, and know nothing 
but one or two things to do. She wants to experiment 
with all sorts of materials and all sorts of ways of 
manipulating them." This is the time for a general 
familiarity with the rudiments of many kinds of skill, 
but the patience and the muscular strain of continued 
application should not be demanded until the beginning 
of later adolescence. Do not put upon girls of this 
age the moral burden of demanding that every project ■, 
should be finished. One must not undertake anything 
that others depend upon her for without finishing it on 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 137 

time ; for being "dependable" is an achievement beyond 
price; but there should be opportunity to experiment. 

As an aid to those who wish to stimulate the girl to 
acquire useful skill and information, along with high 
ideals, the Camp Fire movement is invaluable.*^ It is 
founded upon the soundest principles. It utilizes the 
newly awakened love of symbolism and mystery, the 
growing love of romance, the emulation for distinc- 
tions that encourage rather than bar others, the aspira- 
tion to do and know many things, and the admiration 
for fine and efficient womanhood. Without exhorta- 
tion, ideals are wrought into habits. It has some- 
times been found that there is a tendency for a habit 
to lapse after the symbol is won. Cooperation with the 
mother helps here ; and some guardians enforce the rule 
that a symbol may be kept only while the practice is 
continued. In selecting honors to be worked for by the 
younger groups, it is w^ell to leave the embroidery and 
finer work till later, and encourage the freer, less con- 
fining health- and home- and woodcraft. 

In many communities there is a real hindrance to 
utilizing this excellent organization, in the lack of a 
suitable person for guardian. This lack of the right 
leader is what hinders so much needed work for girls ! 
Often, however, there are women who can be persuaded 
to attempt the work when they realize that there are 
available helps and directions for leaders. 

Organization and Supervision. In all the group activ- 
ities of this age, adult direction and approval are 
needed, and usually desired.^ There must be plenty of 
opportunity for initiative from the girls, but there 

7 See Bibliography, Numbers 85, 86. 

8 Leaders of Girls (Number 21) gives excellent practical help. 



138 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

should also be referendum and recall in the power of 
more experienced advisers. Young girls can imitate 
only such forms of group action as have come within 
their experience, but they are able and willing to 
improve them in adapting them to their own plans. 
Parliamentary procedure, committee work, and busi- 
ness management are better and easier learned now 
than later, and work that arouses interest can be well 
carried out. The service chosen for these early years 
should be definite, personal, and not interminable. 

SUMMARY AND CONNECTING LINK 

The social and educational problems connected with 
the young girl are urgent and concrete. Outwardly 
they concern her manners and speech, her occupations 
and her companions, but inwardly they concern the 
moral and spiritual ideals which determine the direc- 
tion of the woman who is to develop. Help must come 
to her through the persons who incarnate these ideals ; 
and from such, direction, even authority, is welcomed. 
Teaching is most effective by example, but unless the 
girl comprehends the principles underlying the 
examples, she will fail in some of her most intimate 
problems. 

To one who should consider merely the activities and 
spoken words of a young and rapidly growing girl, no 
creature could seem more frankly materialistic and 
earthly-minded. Yet if one will enter sympathetically 
into her secret life, unspoken because she knows no 
words which can express her thoughts, the most 
important factor in all this ferment is her religious 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 139 

life. The new self and the new world that should be 
bounded by the present and the seen would fail to meet 
the craving and the possibilities of the growing girl. 
The educational problems of her religious life must 
have a chapter for their consideration. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 

Numbers 9, 21, 22, 25, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 41, 52, 53, 54, 
55, 71, 72, 73, 80 (Chapter IX), 85, 86, 95, 97, 103, 105, 
111, 113, 118, 123, 136, 141, 150. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS AND MORAL 
EDUCATION 

There are some good old phrases that are falling 
into disuse because they were too often used without 
full consciousness of their meaning. Always churches 
have sought to save "immortal souls." But sometimes 
they have attempted to separate, in thought, that 
immortal soul from the body which conditioned its 
growth, and from the world of persons and things 
through which it grew into human value. So the 
pendulum swung to the other extreme. Because '^soul" 
in religious usage seemed to be a detached something 
having its interests in another and a future world, those 
who were acutely conscious of the vivid present activ- 
ity of living came to drop the whole phrase, and with 
it a needed emphasis on the immortal quality of 
human life. Those who would give adequate help to 
the girl whose life is so rapidly enlarging must recog- 
nize its spiritual needs. 

The New Self and Religious Ideals. We have seen that 
the inner forces of early adolescence make inevitable a 
change in the girl's interests and point of view. Yet 
this change must always be conditioned by the interests 
and viewpoint which were dominant in childhood. 
Past environment, past ideals and habits must add to 
or subtract from the energy available for present ideals 
and efforts. The girl who has been trained from baby- 

140 



PKOBLEMS OF EDUCATION 141 

hood to think of the comfort and convenience of others 
may no more ardently desire to be an unselfish Chris- 
tian woman than the girl who has all her life been 
"spoiled''; but what each will have to do now, in this 
thirteenth year of her life, to insure her achieving this 
ideal, will be vastly different. One will have to form 
an entire new set of habits, and to watch lest she slip 
into the old ones. She will even have to learn to see 
that certain things are selfish, so much a matter of 
course have they become to her. The other may have 
to make considerable effort to continue her thought- 
ful service for others, because of the strange new 
languor and indifference which accompany the fast- 
growing bones and muscles. She will certainly have 
daily opportunities to enlarge her scope of thought and 
service to equal her new powers. But each will strive 
toward her ideal with a new fervor, because she feels 
that she is growing up. 

Because she is growing up, too, each girl will look at 
her ideal from the inside instead of from the outside. 
Fitfully and only partially attained, but enlarging 
daily, is the consciousness of self as an inner, spiritual 
"me." It is this consciousness which we have seen 
makes every adolescent boy and girl want to be recog- 
nized as a person to be reckoned with, not as a child 
to be directed and informed. The self must express 
the fact that it is a self. Therefore much of the dis- 
agreeable assertiveness that is now manifested is due 
to the fact that the only way which seems open to 
assert oneself is to deny or contradict the self of some 
one else. The positive form would be as welcome, but 
it does not occur to the self concerned. Yet when the 
chance for positive affirmation is presented, how rarely 



142 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

is the response at variance with the best of her early 
family affection ! 

The Nature of the Girl's Religious "Decisions." It is 
normally not otherwise in the girl's religious develop- 
ment. If the heavenly Father has had her earliest 
affectionate reverence, if the church has been part of 
the family connection, these same inner forces of 
growth bring her to the consciousness : "I love God not 
because I was taught to, but because / do. I want to 
belong to the church, not as a part of my family but as 
myself/' To be sure, '^natural reactions" differ^ in no 
other manner in this field than in any other part of her 
life. If any definite act or commitment of herself — to 
sing at a school exhibition, or to give up skating to 
make doll clothes for a sick little sister — habitually 
brings a nerve-storm, or a period of interlocked im- 
pulses, so will the presentation by her pastor or her 
Sunday school teacher of the matter of joining the 
church. She may take gladly the opportunity to 
assume individual responsibility, or she may inwardly 
protest against the consciousness of change shown in 
this recognition by others of her growing maturity. 

But there is no issue of "deciding against Christ," 
and to state thus falsely the issue of her uncertainty is 
little short of a crime. We shudder when we hear of 
a mother who said to her fourteen-year-old daughter, 
"If you go to that party to-night, you cannot come into 
this house again." The child went, and by the dis- 
obedience chose against the family. But after the fun 
was over it was a very frightened and little-girl person 

1 It has been said that most of the controversies in psychology, education, and 
theology arise from the fact that nearly every human being supposes that all 
other human beings, unless there is something radically wrong with them, are like 
himself! The temperament of rehgious workers has certainly had much to do 
with insistence on specified "experiences." 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 143 

who sought the police station and was sent to a 
reform school. That home had no right to make per- 
manent the choice against it. The church has no right 
to offer to the children brought up "in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord" an alternative which involves 
putting themselves outside its fold. It can offer the 
opportunity for publicly affirming personal choice of 
the way of living it has taught ; otherwise the old rela- 
tion must continue for a while longer. 

It is to be remembered also that at this age the.new 
consciousness comes in the form not of beliefs but of 
affection and activity. Her famil^has given her all 
she has, but still she has something of her very own 
to contribute to its happiness and success. It is the 
consciousness of something to withhold that makes 
giving it a reality. The child self belonged, and still 
belongs, to God. The new self she can give him, and 
she knows that she gives it by what she does. 

The Religiously Neglected Girl. Thus much of the 
girl whose childhood environment has been complete. 
What of the girl who has had no religious training, or 
only such as she gained through irregular attendance 
at a possibly incompetent Sunday school? The wid- 
ened social horizon, increased interest in persons, 
fluidity of broken up habits, and eagerness for experi- 
menting which this stage of growth brings, make it 
possible for a wise guide in a certain degree to "make 
up lost time." Religion is not an instinct, but an atti- 
tude toward values. Those are mistaken who speak of 
this as the time of the "awakening of the religious 
instinct." The child^s religion is just as real as the 
adult's, for it includes all the instincts that have yet 
ripened. The developing of the racial instincts at this 



144 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

time brings about a revaluation of all the factors of 
life, and a special interest in those factors that other 
persons consider of great value. 

To the religiously neglected girl, be she waif from 
the streets, "poor little rich girl/' or child of the com- 
fortable and ordinary "masses outside the church/' 
there is one, and but one, way of approach. She must 
know some one to whom — not to whose mind or emo- 
tions, but to whose life — religion is the greatest value 
in the world. This makes it a fact of the girl's expe- 
rience, to be investigated and honestly reckoned with. 
Information desired opens the way for instruction, 
and character admired and loved gives adequate 
impulse for forming the new habits. Her choice of 
this new standard as higher than those hitherto 
known and followed, and the de.sire to make it her 
own, personal and permanent, is very possible and 
vital. It is surely an adequate basis for church mem- 
bership. 

Need of Concrete Interpretation. The person who can 
best make religion real to the girl who lacks religious 
background, and often the one who can best help the 
girl from the religious home to reconstruct her scale 
of values aright, is usually the girl's chosen representa- 
tive of Ideal Womanhood. This does not imply that; 
the Sunday school teacher of these girls should be, any 
more than their day-school teacher, a very young 
woman. The middle-aged woman whom they respect 
for her knowledge of the Bible and for her Christian 
character will have far more real educative influence 
than a pretty but vapid young woman without either 
knowledge or skill in meeting the needs of these eager 
young creatures. It does mean that the girl must have 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 145 

some one among those who represent religion to her 
to interpret its meaning in terms of girl life. 

The New Moral Sensitiveness. The new relations to 
persons, and to herself, are felt as moral problems. 
The tantrum of temper, which in childhood was for- 
gotten as soon as punishment and forgiveness had 
wiped it off the slate, is now recognized as in some 
way an expression of herself. It may be gloried in as 
a means of power for getting her own way, or bemoaned 
as showing what a "horrid thing" she really is; but 
whether she admires or detests the "wickedness," she 
will apply a moral term to the passionate outbreak. 
So with truth-telling, or cheating in games or school 
work. Habit may have blinded a girl to the signifi- 
cance of certain given actions, but as soon as they are 
a question at all, the problem is a moral problem. This 
makes the task of the educator largely one of so pre- 
senting items of conduct that the girl will ask herself 
the question. Is this right or wrong? If any girl 
seems deliberately to choose to "do the thing she knows 
is wrong" it will be well to find out who decided that 
it is wrong. Authority must not be self-constituted. 
To tell one that a thing is wrong is not at all to con- 
vince her that it is; unless some other consideration 
deters her, she will probably "try it and see." Her 
ultimate attitude to the act in question will be deter- 
mined by the consequences experienced and one of the 
most unpleasant of possible consequences is to lose the 
approval or good opinion of some one she cares for. 

Applying Educational Principles. When moral prin- 
ciples are being decided on such a mixed basis of 
experiment and imitation, the task of the educator, 
whether parent, teacher, or adoree, must begin with 



146 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

a patient discovery of what is going on in the girl's 
mind. ^Trom the known to the unknown," ^'From par- 
ticular to general and back to the new particular/' 
and other well-worn phrases of the teacher's vocab- 
ulary may here have a fresh meaning and real point. 
The "point of contact" in moral instruction must be 
something that the girl herself realizes as a moral 
problem. It was a thirteen-year-old French-Canadian 
child who had been caught writing her spelling lesson 
out of a surreptitiously open book. She listened to 
her teacher's horrified remarks on the moral obliquity 
of such "underhandedness" and "untrustworthiness," 
and finally, looking up with frank wonder and incred- 
ulity, said: "I don't suppose it was just right, but I 
don't see anything so ^awfuV about it as you make out." 
The teacher thought of the home of the canal-driver's 
child, and of the generations of her own Puritan an- 
cestry, and accepted as unconscious rebuke the protest 
against demanding the same moral vision. 

Is there then to be a ''double standard" or a "sliding 
scale" in moral values? Only in our patience, while 
growth goes slowly on. The way to broaden knowl- 
edge in moral realms, as in any other, is to add to 
what is there. Every girl has some code which she has 
worked out for herself, or at least accepted as her 
own. This can be altered in two directions. What is 
"square," "fair play," "white," "clever," or "mean," 
"low-down," "sneaking," and "stupid" can be made to 
include more and other actions than she had so classi- 
fied. And individual actions can be changed from one 
/category to the other by helping her to see the judg- 
ment upon them of people whom she admires. Often 
the best help is to see that one action is like another 



PEOBLEMS OF EDUCATION 147 

that she had already correctly classified. Nathan the 
prophet^ would have made an admirable teacher for 
adolescent girls! 

Teaching by Example. One effective way of develop- 
ing the girPs standard is by the steady example of per- 
sons whom she accepts as representative of "religious 
people." If the Sunday school teacher goes to Sunday 
school every Sunday, the class will not miss. If the 
teacher speaks of the sermon as something that has 
applied to her life during the week, the girls will try 
to see if it is applicable to them likewise. If she 
admits that the poise and self-control they admire is 
something that requires constant effort that doesn't 
always succeed, they will not give up in despair. A 
red-haired girl said to a friend: "I thought all red- 
haired folks had an awful temper to struggle with, but 
I don't believe Mrs. Gray knows what ^temper' means. 
She is a saint.'' Mrs. Gray heard of the comment and 
said to the lovable but fiery-tempered little pupil: 
"Ask my mother whether I had a temper, my dear. 
And let me tell you a secret : Fm desperately afraid of 
it now. That's why I do not dare to break, even once, 
the habit of thinking a sentence clear through before I 
speak, whenever I feel ^riled.' " The actual way in 
which some one else had met and conquered her own 
problem — that was help that counted ! 

Often the real trouble is not that the girl does not 
realize that her way of meeting a situation is wrong, 
but that she does not know the right way to meet it. 
"An ounce of example is worth a pound of precept," 
not because the precept is valueless, but because the 
girl does not know what to do with it. A settlement 

2 2 Sam. 12. 1-14. 



148 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

worker was telling a young volunteer club leader of 
the beginnings of her own club work. ''There were not 
enough chairs to go around, and in trying to 'beat each 
other to' a chair, two of the girls pushed each other 
down and actually fought over it. Of course as host- 
esses we could not tell our guests they were rude ! But 
as soon as another resident came in, we each rose and 
politely offered her a chair. At the next club meeting 
we had more chairs, but still more girls. When one of 
the residents came in, four of the girls sprang up to 
offer her their chairs.'' It was some months later, 
among a group of girls in the same settlement, that a 
gentleman came in to visit. One of the girls arose 
and offered him her chair. The resident said gently to 
her, "Keep your seat, my dear; we will let the gentle- 
men find their own and bring them in." It was still 
another stage in moral progress when the girl learned 
how to accept service from others so that acceptance 
would give pleasure. The Sunday school teacher or 
club leader who invites her girls to tea at her own 
home can modify their tastes and habits by the appoint- 
ments of that home and of her own room. The affec- 
tionate and gentle courtesy of the other members of 
the family to each other will make its impress. And 
if the teacher talks freely and naturally of God, if she 
makes the life and teachings of Jesus the court of 
appeal in questions of her own conduct, the most skep- 
tical and indifferent girl will decide that religion is at 
least important. 

Shaping Ideals by Information. Another way of 
extending the girl's experience is through her imagina- 
tion. The young girl will usually not ask questions 
about some of the things she is most anxious to know. 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 149 

She prefers to find out for herself. The means of find- 
ing out are observation of real or dramatized life, and 
books. What are the motives that rule the big world? 
Not the world of her family and schoolmates — she has 
fathomed them! — but the world of past and of far- 
away, of romance and achievement, which belongs to 
her ? What is the answer she is receiving in the motion 
picture and the library book? That book is probably 
fiction. Does it give a picture of life that is real, or 
distorted and impossible? Accurate historical fiction, 
biographies of persons worth imitating, and "stories" 
that are wholesome and natural, can be made a great 
moral force. 

An admirable selection of biblical and biographical 
material is found in the various graded Sunday school 
courses for the "Intermediate" section (thirteen to 
sixteen years). The most widely used of these courses 
are the International Sunday School graded course, 
published by the several evangelical denominations; 
the Bible Study Union (and "Blakeslee") series, pub- 
lished by Scribners; "The Constructive Bible Studies" 
published by the University of Chicago Press ; and the 
series being put out by the American Unitarian Asso- 
ciation's Religious Education Department. Each of 
these series selects material from the deeds and the 
teachings of Jesus, Paul, Old Testament heroes and 
prophets, and the great men and women of the kingdom 
of God in the centuries of the Christian era ; and makes 
practical studies also of the problems of ethical con- 
duct and service which are met by the boys and girls 
in their everyday life. An excellent book for the 
teacher of the young girl to use is Christian Citizenship 
for Girls, by Helen Thoburn, published by the National 



150 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Board of the Young Women's Christian Association. 
Any girl who studies lessons following these series 
must have for her "yardstick'' the "measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ" — tangible and attain- 
able and lovably human. 

Expressing the Religious Life: Worship. This is the 
time of shyness in expressing personal religious aspira- 
tions, especially before older persons, or boys, or large 
groups even of girls of her own age. The home, and 
the small group composed of the Sunday school class 
and its beloved teacher, are the most effective means 
for spiritual culture. The church worship will be more 
fervently shared, and the sermon listened to more 
intelligently than heretofore; but if the girl is not to 
be left stranded on a little island of selfish individual- 
ism, she must contribute to a religious and ethical 
group life. Where family prayer, and sympathetic dis- 
cussion of the new moral problems as they arise, are 
part of the home life, a girl is kept from the habit of 
silence which deprives her of needed expression. If 
she does not have this help, the Sunday school class 
will have all the more to do. One of its normal uses is 
to supplement the family expression of religious 
thought and life, not only by instruction but by free 
discussion of common moral problems, with equals, 
guided by an older person.^ Another of its indispens- 
able contributions is the development of social feeling 
in worship and prayer, and the natural expression of 
that common feeling in oral prayer with the group. 
Both home and class are excellent places in which to 
learn how to be both truthful and considerate, and how 
to be frank and direct without being unpleasant. 

3 See Bibliography, Numbers 54, 71. 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 151 

Expressing the Religious Life: Service. Individual 
and group activities are both indispensable for prac- 
ticing the habits that are to form character. One of 
the best means for combining this education with the 
important ability to work with others for a common end 
is through the organized Sunday school class or club.* 
A comprehensive list of activities for classes and clubs 
is published^ which includes, as well, a bibliography of 
nature study, handcraft, and social entertainments; 
and an account of the principal organizations for boys 
and girls, with addresses of their respective head- 
quarters. The Camp Fire Girls seems to be well 
adapted also to church use. One criticism has been 
made: that its omission of the distinctly religious in 
its ceremonial makes it seem "a little bit pagan." 
There seems no reason, however, why a church Camp 
Fire should not have "honors" and their recognition 
symbols which could be "their very own best," to be 
added to the customary ones. Girls at this age are on 
common ground in school and community, whatever 
their faith, Jewish or Christian, and the inspiration 
and thrill of belonging to so great a common sisterhood 
is an educational factor not to be lightly disregarded. 

To read in the leaflet above quoted (Secondary Divi- 
sion Leaflet No. 4) the list of things done in one year 
by one class of younger girls in a small city gives a 
conception of the astonishing energy to be conserved 
for Christian character and social service. The older 
people of that town had not yet reached the stage of 
social self -consciousness which sends for experts to 



* Number 148, just referred to above, is full of questions stated in a way to com- 
pel girls to think on the real problems of their lives. 

6 See Number 71. The two leaflets may be obtained through any State Sun- 
day school office, a,nd are invaluable to workers with organized adolescents. 



152 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

investigate conditions and advise what other experts 
are to be hired to mend those conditions. This class 
of young girls thought it would be "nice" to give 
dinners and clothes to the poor, if there were any poor ; 
and they started out to see. "It took two of the mem- 
bers, with the aid of a dray and a driver, six and one- 
half hours to distribute these baskets, for we found, to 
our amazement, there were twenty-two families in our 
little city of eight thousand who would have no turkey 
and goodies if they were not supplied them. . . . The 
write-up given by the dailies so stirred up the people 
that . . . [within two months] . . . there had been 
organized the United Charities, backed by every reli- 
gious and fraternal organization in town." And the 
fourteen-year-old president of the Sunday school class, 
the "Count-On-Me's," was made a director of the Board 
of that United Charities. 

Later report of the class mentions these things done 
in the following year : "We have sung in the hospital, 
visited the sick, kept the hospital supplied with flowers 
during the summer, taken charge of various special day 
programs — 'Rally Day,' 'Children's Day,' etc. At a 
special service on Mother's Day the Knights of Pythias 
were our guests. We entertained the mothers, sent 
missionary magazines to a field asking for them, and 
remnants of cloth for patchwork to a mission school 
for Indians; gave the 'Get-together luncheon' for all 
the teachers and officers of the Sundaj^ schools in 
Minot ; and 'Father and Son Banquet,' the money being 
used to pay for the care of a blind child in India. 
'Teas,' with costumes and curios from China and India, 
helped pay for the college course and music lessons of 
a Japanese girl studying in an American college, and 



PKOBLEMS OF EDUCATION 153 

personal Christmas gifts were made and sent to her 
with separate cards or notes from each member of the 
class. Song books were sent to a frontier Sunday 
school in the same State, and eightj^-flve large pictures 
(colored lesson rolls) and hundreds of picture cards, 
paper dolls with their outfits, and books for the gov- 
ernment library, were sent to a mission station in India. 
A Workers' Library and fifteen other reference books 
were purchased and presented to the teachers of our 
own Sunday school. A social was held which secured a 
large amount of out-grown clothing to be used by the 
Salvation Army. Many jolly and informal suppers were 
prepared at the church parlors, to some of which the 
boys were invited. One night the pastor and his wife 
were invited to such a supper and afterward each wrote 
a message on her place card and sent it, tied to- 
gether with the class colors, to an absent and lonely 
member. Then we packed two boxes valued at fifty-five 
dollars and sent them for a home missionary's Christ- 
mas. Eight of the class recently joined the church.'' 

The president concluded this annual report with the 
words: "I cannot recount all the activities of the 
Count-On-Me's, but they are little things — ^just the 
common, ordinary things of everyday life that every 
class can do — little things, but as I have said, they 
make the difference between a live class and a dead 
class. . . . We have a motto which answers the ques- 
tion often asked us, Why, how do you do it?' Let me 
commend it to you — it is this : 'The way to do a thing 
is to do it!' . . . If we spend our moments idly 
dreaming of the big things we shall do later when 
opportunity offers, we shall overlook many a chance to 
bring happiness and sunshine to those about us. And, 



154 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

furthermore, we shall not be ready to do the great thing 
when it presents itself to be done, for we will lack the 
training brought about by doing cheerfully whatever 
we can to brighten this old world and the lives about 
us." 6 

Such service is definite, practical, appeals to the per- 
sonal sympathies, and puts the girls in touch with ''real 
live people" who can be seen or their letters read, and 
does not subject them to the emotional strain of con- 
tact with the more sordid kinds of distress. Personal 
service to the crippled, blind, or aged is especially whole- 
some as an outlet for the excess of physical energy. 

Character by Practice. In all these character-develop- 
ing plans it needs to be remembered that we cannot 
by any instruction or drill induce the possession of the 
^'virtues" of truth, honesty, honor, modesty, loyalty, 
or unselfishness. The only way is the slow way of 
building up habits by practice. Each girl has to 
achieve truthfulness by telling the truth; and become 
honest by the way she does her work; honorable by 
keeping the promises she has made; loyal by choosing 
the good of the family, the class, or the school when 
the conflict is with her own preferences; womanly by 
remembering her ideal and not permitting any coarse 
word or act. Each failure has to be recognized as hav- 
ing unraveled some of the fabric of habit, and so calling 
for careful attention to knit it up again. This method 
is harder for the girl, and much, much harder for her 
parents, teachers, and friends, than just talking. How- 
ever, the easy way of mere "precept and example" won't 
work; but every repetition of "ethical practice," and 



» From a report read by the president of the class at the North Dakota State 
Sunday School Convention, June, 1914. 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 155 

every bit of her pleasure and ours at hard- won suc- 
cess, are working together to make habitual that set of 
"right reactions of thought and deed" which we call 
womanly character. 

SUMMARY 

The beginning of adolescence is not the "time of 
the awakening of the religious instinct," but the 
delayed instincts which now appear must be religiously 
utilized. The previous religious training or lack of it 
makes a vital difference in the foundations on which 
the developing religious life has to build. The Chris- 
tian child has nothing to undo, no radical alteration 
in the direction in which her girlhood is to develop. In 
its relation to God as to the family, her newly con- 
scious self must affirm its affection and its purpose 
with a new insight. The religiously neglected girl has 
fundamental changes to make, but she sees that they 
are in the direction of her admirations and her new 
ideals. To both the age brings a break-up of old habits 
and an attentiveness to new ideals which make it of 
crucial importance to the educator. The inner develop- 
ment of every girl makes possible new expressions of 
her loyalty and good will in cooperative activities of 
real service to others and value to herself. 

The need of introducing every essential element of 
character now is the greater because we cannot know 
how rapidly or how soon inner forces, or a sudden cru- 
cial experience, or an emotional tempest, may bring the 
crisis of the next period. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 28, 29, 45, 54, 55, 57, 58, (59), 62, 65, 66, 68, 
70, 71, 76, 77, 80, 146 148, 150, 



PART III 
MIDDLE ADOLESCENCE 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 

The seething ferment of early adolescence cannot 
continue indefinitely. Order must come out of the 
chaos. The rate of bodily growth is slowed by the 
maturing forces at work, and the formation of new 
cerebral adjustments is not only possible, it is inevit- 
able. The new and the old must form some sort of 
livable adjustment. The inertia of all matter, even 
that in living organisms, will soon cause the adjust- 
ments of the parts of the organism, to each other and 
to their outward surroundings, to harden into habits. 
This hardening will take place whether the adjust- 
ment has been consciously or unconsciously made. 

Middle Adolescence: A "Crisis" Period. The phys- 
ical, mental, social, and spiritual life of the girl is 
approaching a period of settlement, of harmonizing. 
Now the elements are melted in the fervent heat of 
physical and emotional stress, but the molten life 
will soon cool, and remain in whatever form has been 
given it by the educator, or by undirected chance. 
This clarifying or re-defining is sometimes gradual; 
but often it is like precipitation in a chemical solu- 
tion : some definite event, like the sharp rap on tne 
test tube, makes everything fall into place and leave 
the solution clear. For this reason this is often 
referred to as the "period of crisis." 

159 



160 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Physically, middle adolescence^ in the girl cor- 
responds roughly to the time from first menstruation 
to the completion of bodily growth. Some increase 
in height may occur during late adolescence, and 
alterations in weight are often characteristic of dif- 
ferent periods of maturity, but in general the bones 
will have completed their growth by about the seven- 
teenth year. The physiological task of these years is 
that of striking the normal balance between the 
hormones from the somatic and sexual glands, and 
adjustment of the whole organism by means of the 
new habits to its new dimensions and relations, as 
well as to the periodic function of menstruation. For 
any effective educational direction of the varied 
forces at work within the growing girl, an under- 
standing of the physiological factors is fundamental. 

Periodicity. Perhaps there is no phase of all the 
subjects of women's work and education which has 
received more attention than the fact of the periodic 
phenomenon of menstruation. Higher education has 
been assailed as an impossibility or a menace, and 
industrial, political, and professional life has been 
supposed to be barred to women on this account. 
When the subject of equal pay for equal positions in 
the schools of a great city was being agitated, the 
opponents declared that the periodic absence of 
women teachers was of itself sufficient argument 
against the "absurd" suggestion. But when statistics 
showed a slightly higher average of days of absence 
per man than per woman, the argument was omitted. 

1 Individual variation, affected by race and by environment, is so great that it 
is difficult to assign even approximately the lengths of these periods. Statistics 
quoted by Stanley Hall (Adolescence, vol. i, pp. 474ff .) make the divisions roughly, 
Early adolescence, twelve to fifteen years; middle, (fourteen) fifteen to eighteen; 
and later, (seventeen) eighteen to twenty-five. 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 161 

A summary of what may be called the classical atti- 
tude toward the subject, and a bibliography of the 
scientific writings which deal with it, are given in Mrs. 
Hollingworth's admirable monograph.^ ''The tradi- 
tion emanating from the mystic and romantic novelists 
. . . has found its way into scientific writing. 
Through the centuries gone those who wrote were men, 
and since the phenomenon of periodicity was foreign 
to them, they not unnaturally seized upon it as a 
probable source of the alleged 'mystery' and 'caprice' 
of womankind. The dogma once formulated has been 
quoted on authority from author to author until the 
present day. A more immediate source of error is to 
be noted in the fact that the greater part of the evi- 
dence quoted on this subject is . . . the contribution 
of physicians. But it should be obvious to the least 
critical mind that normal women do not come under 
the care and observation of physicians." 

Mrs. Hollingworth is the first to make scientific 
observation of the mental and motor eflSciency of 
normal women by rigidly controlled scientific method 
and with instruments of precision. Daily tests for a 
period of three months, which were checked up by 
identical tests upon men for the same length of time, 
made possible a comparison of the influence of the sup- 
posed factor with chance variations in the same sub- 
jects and in subjects not affected by this factor. The 
results are most instructive. Briefly summed, the 
figures show beyond question that careful and exact 
measurement reveals no trace of a "cycle'' (referred to 
by Ellis and others) or of a periodic mental or motor 
inefficiency in normal women, affecting any part of the 

« See Bibliography, Number 106. 



162 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

period, or influencing the variability of performance. 
And no regularly recurring period of maximum effi- 
ciency within each month is discernible. There is evi- 
dence that mental association processes are adversely 
affected by pain, judging from two instances recorded 
where pain was experienced on the first day. This is 
in accord with other experiments which shov/ an aver- 
sion to work when a cold in the head, eye-strain, or 
other bodily feelings make a given task "feel" intoler- 
able. ^ 

Health and Poise. We seem to deal with two per- 
fectly obvious sets of facts: There are women who 
are irritable, unstable, forming their judgments accord- 
ing to personal prejudice, and unable to do good "team 
work" except with workers selected by this personal 
bias. These women do show some relation between 
this instability and moodiness, and present or past 
disturbances of menstrual health. There are other 
women whose serenity and poise and steady efficiency 
give them authority in any situation of life, and enable 
them to work smoothly with "difficult" persons, both 
men and women. These are found to be women who 
have the habit of health, and whose corresponding 
mental habits are not easily shaken even by temporary 
physical disturbances. 

The deductions from these facts appear equally 
obvious. It is the function of health to secure a normal 
instead of a morbid response to every situation, and 
health is largely a structure of physiological habits. 
Health is thus the foundation for character. Therefore 
in the period when a girl is forming her life habits 
the basic moral responsibility is to see that sound 

8 Thorndike, (Number 92) Educational Psychology, vol. iii, p. 104. 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 163 

health is attained. Let it disturb no one that 
"caprice," "mystery" (that is, unreliability!), and 
"nerves" are considered feminine characteristics. 
So was the "costal type" of breathing until it was 
proved to be due to badly shaped corsets and "ladylike" 
lack of exercise. These mental characteristics too are 
an entirely adventitious development, and will disap- 
pear when their causes are removed. Good humor, 
which is the surest way of showing good will to 
those who have to live with us, is proverbially insepar- 
able from good digestion, whether in man or woman. 
It has been recognized that, regardless of sex distinc- 
tions, aesthetic and moral sensitiveness is dependent 
in part upon a clean and active skin. It is one of the 
many less obvious connections between health and 
character which needs pointing out. 

The Varied Stimuli of Emotion. Except in a few 
cases, like dyspepsia, we do not think of looking for 
a bodily state as a cause of an emotion. In such cases, 
the inner discomfort is a localized sensation, quite dis- 
tinct from the "crossness" which we excuse on its 
account. Commonly we do not stop to think of what 
goes to make up an emotion. We "feel" it, or "are" 
it, and attention is focused on something outside our- 
selves which is associated with it as its cause. The sen- 
sations from the changes in circulation, bodily temper- 
ature, respiration, and glandular secretion which form 
the vague and diffuse bulk of our personal conscious- 
ness, both in emotions and in "objectless" moods,^ are 
too simultaneous and too indirect to be readily local- 
ized. The "reflexes" which cause these inner changes 
frequently and normally occur in response to an out- 

* Compare p. 55 (footnote) . 



164 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

side stimulus, such as an unexpected telegram, a snub, 
nearly dropping a piece of costly china, facing an 
audience, or being grabbed in the dark. The resulting 
apprehension, anger, or "hurt feelings," grief, stage 
fright, or terror have definite and recognizable com- 
binations of these inner feelings. The fact which is 
seldom known is that the same combinations of 
unpleasant ^'bodily reverberations" may be caused by 
a change in the secretions of the liver or more obscure 
glands. The altered secretion may chemically affect 
the nerve centers and make them more sensitive to 
stimulus, which may come from outside, or from pres- 
sure from tissues swollen perhaps by the same cause 
which altered the secretion itself. Such a purely 
physiological disturbance does not occur in normal 
bodily functioning, and when it does occur the dis- 
turbing tumor or inflammation (or even microbe) gives 
us of itself no sensation whatever. It is not at all sur- 
prising that we should look about for some adequate 
reason for the well-recognized state of feeling, and so 
associate with the reflex whatever in the external situ- 
ation happens to be simultaneous. 

For instance, at some time we have actually expe- 
rienced an intentional slight. The instinctive response 
to the "cut direct" from another human being is a 
tightening about the heart, a catching of the breath, 
tension of many muscles, blood mounting to the cheeks, 
and a "bitter" sensation that seems not to be so much 
in the throat as in the diaphragm. Without rigid con- 
trol, this complex is succeeded by the jerking of various 
muscles and gnashing the teeth. This series may recur 
whenever memory recalls the incident and we "give 
way" to the instinctive accompaniments. This whole 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTOES 165 

chain of involuntary motor impulses follows from the 
stimulation of some "sympathetic ganglion." In the 
case of the actual slight, the stimulus energy is started 
originally by the visual centers recording the haughty 
stare or signal of disdain from the other human being. 
It reaches the motor center in charge of this particular 
reflex by way of other cerebral and intervening centers. 
But the same motor reflex may at some other time be 
stimulated by pressure or irritation from within the 
body, whereupon all the sensations of the "emotion- 
at-being-slighted" follow. The "innocent bystander" 
who happens to be available is associated with this 
unpleasant wave of feeling, because habit connects so 
violent and unusual a disturbance with some adequate 
external stimulus. 

Functional Disturbances as Stimuli of Emotion Reflexes. 
A more common example of the same involuntary asso- 
ciation of effect with supposed cause occurs in the case 
of a certain cycle, of longer duration, of lowered tem- 
perature in the limbs, pressure about the heart, nerve 
tension, general "depression" of functions, and loss of 
appetite. A familiar cause of this response is the situ- 
ation of facing the demand for more work than can be 
successfully accomplished, or an accumulation of 
annoying disappointments. Another frequent cause is 
too great application to some sedentary employment, 
with lack of exercise to clear out the "ashes" from 
the system. Whatever the cause, we naturally and 
reasonably give the same name to the same feeling, and 
say that we "have the blues." It is just as natural, 
but not at all reasonable, to try to find the same remote 
cause in every case, and therefore to pick out from 
a day which is really as efficient and satisfactory as 



166 GIKLHOOD AND CHAKACTER 

usual disappointments and failures to warrant our 
self-pity. 

Functional disturbance of the reproductive system 
is one of the most frequent causes in women of those 
reflexes which cause a large part of the states of con- 
sciousness known as fear, discouragement, anger, jeal- 
ousy, chagrin, irritability, and blues. The altered 
secretion from the ovaries due to inflammation from 
a "cold" probably alters the sensitiveness to stimula- 
tion of some of the sympathetic nerve centers and 
possibly of special sense nerves as well. A swollen 
condition of the uterus (to a slight extent normal 
during menstruation) may exert a mechanical pressure 
on other organs or on pelvic nerve centers and so cause 
a disturbance of other functions. If the disturbed 
secretion were that of nose or eyes, or the inflammation 
were in the throat, the sense organs in the lining mem- 
branes would give us information where to apply the 
remedy for the discomfort. But the sensations from 
the pressures in question are indirect, and give no hint 
of where the trouble really is. 

When Mrs. A's emotion, attributed to Mrs. B's sup- 
posedly sarcastic glance, is really the result of blood 
pressure from an unsuspected functional cause, the 
laws of association make it inevitable that the next 
time she sees Mrs. B, Mrs. A will have a recurrence 
of the emotion. Mrs. B naturally feels resentment at 
the unjust accusation, and one can readily supply in 
imagination the sequel of misunderstanding and sus- 
picion. But when "poor dear Mrs. A'' has to go to the 
hospital, who connects with that fact her failure to 
"get along with'' Mrs. B? One need only to have 
worked with any group of earnest women gathered 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 167 

from the average in health and the more than average 
in ambition, to realize how frequently the "nerves'' of 
some one of them may play her a shabby trick, and 
how the success of the group efforts is hampered by 
just such occurrences, the real cause of which is seldom 
suspected. 

Moral Significance of Establishing Health in the New 
Functions. The reason for emphasizing these facts is 
that middle adolescence is the time to establish men- 
strual health. The experience of normal women and 
the testimony of really scientific experiment agree that, 
if the organism is adjusted as it should be, the regular 
activities of the ovaries and their accessories cause no 
more disturbance than those of the healthy liver. Any 
gland that gets sufficiently out of order, be it ovary, 
liver, or thyroid, can upset the whole body and mind 
and character. There is thus much basis in fact for 
the customary attitude toward functional periodicity 
in woman as a handicap in her work, and as a cause 
of the lack of emotional and intellectual poise and 
balance observed too frequently in individuals. 

Now, the first appearance of any new factor in the 
bodily economy is frequently a time of upset. The 
last "wisdom tooth" may cause as much pain as baby's 
first incisor, but it comes when the individual is better 
able to control other conditions, and when it is a 
smaller proportional factor in the body's work. Con- 
sequently, after the second summer, few die teething. 
So, until menstrual regularity is established the func- 
tion is particularly liable to disturbance, and the 
emotional effects accompanying such disturbances 
attract increased attention by their novelty. This is 
the time to secure a lasting habit of health by effective 



168 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

attention that shall make unusual attention later 
unnecessary. 

The healthy-minded girl who is not given an ade- 
quate explanation of the importance of perfect health 
in this function usually rebels against what rules are 
taught her with a hygienic purpose in mind. When 
she is given no reasons that she can "see the sense of/' 
she feels that such rules are old wives' superstitions, 
to be neglected. Indeed, her feeling is sometimes justi- 
fied, because the ignorance of her instructors is almost 
as great as her own. But carelessness of hygienic pre- 
cautions causes or increases functional disturbances, 
and soon the physical causes for all sorts of future 
failures are fastened upon her. 

Another type of girl is all too prone to revel in the 
mystery of the new experience, especially if it has been 
made mysterious to her, and to let the sympathy and 
coddling and relief from duties, whether needed or not, 
and regardless of added burdens to others, become a 
habit. It is also sadly easy for emotion to become a 
satisfaction in itself. Sometimes a morbid girl actu- 
ally enjoys the tears and blues. More often the satis- 
fyingness of her emotional manifestations depends 
upon their effect on other persons. If the "miserable- 
ness" brings sensuous coddling, and attention which 
flatters a sense of importance; or if hysteria gains 
coveted ends at the price of preventing a "scene," such 
habits may grow and persist. 

Sometimes a maladjustment of the new functions 
may involve some more serious condition of the organs. 
Many a girl is left to fight as "temptation'' what no 
moral strength in the world can overcome, but what 
restoration to physical normality, if made in time, 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS 169 

would soon put out of existence. ''Explosions" of 
temper or ''nerves/' hysterical outbreaks, failures in 
self-control, are often keenly felt as moral disgrace. 
If these symptoms which she "just can't help" are 
treated as due to the girl's willful selfishness, her effort 
at repression often increases the disturbance which 
causes them, and so ultimately increases the abnormal 
symptoms. The girl whose excitement in the presence 
of men makes the wiseacres shake their heads may be 
suffering from some local irritation the removal of 
which would leave her as modest as a girl should be. 
The Educator's Responsibility for the Girl's Health. 
The ease and certainty with which proper menstrual 
health is established depend, first of all, upon the 
habits of the girl's other bodily functions. In prepara- 
tion for this crisis, special care is needed during the 
rapid growth of early adolescence to avoid two bodily 
conditions which may seriously affect the new func- 
tions. One of these is a faulty standing position, 
which twists the pelvis and cramps or distorts the 
development of the generative organs. The other is 
faulty elimination of waste. This interferes with the 
developing pelvic organs by mechanical pressure, and 
also affects all the organs and nerve connections by 
poisoning the blood supply. Books are published 
which give wholesome and practical counsel, intelli- 
gible to girls as well as to their mothers,^ and to those 
the persons responsible for the girl's daily regimen 
may be referred. If a girl who follows the simple 
laws of hygiene through early and middle adolescence 
fails to achieve health and comfort, it may be there is 
some organic difficulty. In this case the method by 

6 See BibUography, Numbers 95, 105, 107. 109, 110, 114, 115. 



170 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

which the girl is to achieve health is a matter for a 
competent physician, but the responsibility for seeing 
that she does achieve health rests upon the parent or 
other educator. 

Conclusion. Emotions with a purely physiological 
cause may be attributed to situations in no way con- 
nected with them. The habit of reacting by a certain 
emotion to a situation thus falsely associated may per- 
sist after the physiological stimulus to the emotion has 
been removed. As such mental and emotional habits 
may remain as a permanent handicap after their real 
cause has been eliminated, while impaired health is 
sure to be a permanent cause of a losing fight for emo- 
tional and moral balance, there cannot be too great 
insistence on achievement of health at this crucial 
period. Such prevention of false emotional habits 
would prove the remedy for most of the personal fric- 
tion and lack of team work which hamper the social 
achievements of women, and it must begin in the crisis 
period of middle adolescence. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 22, 32, 58, (59), 63, 69, 95, 106, 107, 109, 110, 
120, 123. 



CHAPTER X 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 

"Oh we had the loveliest time last night at the glee 
club concert! The first tenor was the cutest thing! 
And that bass was just too funny for words. But the 
way they sang the Barcarole was perfectly heavenly. 
It made little shivers up your spine !" 

"I wish you could have seen Genevieve at the dance 
last night. She looked too perfectly stunning for 
words. Isn't she a dear? I'm just crazy about her!" 

If you were to be led blindfolded into a room and 
should hear bits of conversation such as the above, 
with little giggles and shrieks of laughter apropos of 
nothing in particular, with perhaps a gay little tune 
hummed under the breath — would you need three 
guesses as to the average age of the group? And 
wouldn't you expect to see, when you were unblinded, 
bodies and faces full of animation, cheeks glowing and 
paling by turns, arms and fingers intertwined, and 
little pattings and smoothings of curls and ribbons as 
glances stole toward a group of boys at the other end 
of the room? It is as difficult for a girl in the heart 
of her teens to use language without italics, superla- 
tives, and exclamation points, as it is for her body to 
resist the rhythm of music. In a world of prosaic and 
staid adults, the young girl supplies the charm of the 
unexpected, the inconstant, the incalculable — not in 

171 



172 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the realm of business and morals, where it would be 
reprehensible, but in the realm of social fellowship 
and adventure in personality. 

Intensity and Variety of the Elements of Life. 
Throughout these short years of crisis the physiolog- 
ical and psychological, the social and the economic 
factors are producing new combinations in the emerg- 
ing personality with kaleidoscopic brilliance and 
swiftness. The eagerness of the muscles for action is 
the basis of interest in work and play, amusement and 
achievement. The keenness of the senses for stimula- 
tion by light, color, sound, and touch is the basis of the 
sympathetic interest in art and nature and music; of 
the lure of the street and the dance hall; and of the 
joy in caresses and in the touch of silken-fine gar- 
ments. The energy of the brain connections by which 
ideas are associated is the basis of the keen intellect- 
ual interest and zest in executive eflflciency in practical 
affairs. The responsiveness of the girl's whole organ- 
ism to any stimulus from any source is the basis of the 
emotional ardor of her social, personal, and moral 
ideals. 

Every sensation is intense, every muscle full of 
energy to do what the brain bids — and a little bit more. 
But this sensitivit)^ and voluntary energy are in closest 
touch with the involuntary reflexes of respiration, cir- 
culation, and glandular secretion. It is as though the 
stimulation of any sensory or motor mechanism were 
projected outward and inward and reflected from 
center to center, stimulating more and more of the 
organism. The ''thrill" of emotion from watching a 
sunset or listening to a sonata, from reading a tale of 
heroism or seeing a melodrama, in so far as it is a 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 173 

"thrill," is the result of being "stirred" deeply enough 
to arouse these motor reflexes. Closely related to these 
involuntary reflexes as factors in emotion are the keen- 
ness of response of all the special senses, and the vigor 
of the voluntary muscular activities. 

Romantic Imagination. As bones, muscles, and nerves 
reach adult proportion and become adapted to each 
other, and the body has learned the trick of managing 
all the new combinations with certainty and ease, it 
seems that the brain, relieved from some of the con- 
scious attention to directing motions, can focus its 
energy on organizing the central processes which 
accompany what we call "association of ideas." Then, 
too, as the sensations from within the body become 
habitual, they tend once more to drop out of conscious- 
ness, and impressions from the outside world again 
occupy the center of attention. The inner experiences 
through which the girl has just lived give new meaning 
to the impressions which flow in through the senses, 
and wider content to the ideas imparted by others. 
The nervous organism is so alive that almost all sense 
perceptions and motor discharges, and almost any con- 
nections between them, are eminently "satisfying to 
the organism as a whole." So "ready to connect" is 
almost every possible "path" that even pain is "inter- 
esting." Indeed, so exquisite is sensitivity that the 
distinction between pleasure and pain is hard to draw. 
Sunset in an orchard in bloom, a mist rising from the 
sea, Mendelssohn's Spring Song, the notes of a meadow 
lark, are often said by young girls to be "so lovely they 
hurt." Grief and melancholy are hugged to the heart 
in an ecstasy of exultation in being able to understand 
and appreciate the "world-pain." This is the period 



174 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

of the greatest development of the romantic imagina- 
tion. 

An interesting study was made by asking a large 
number of boys and girls of different ages, in schools 
in widely separated cities, to write compositions about 
a certain picture. Children and early adolescents were 
most matter-of-fact in their interpretations. The inci- 
dent depicted was assigned to various periods of his- 
tory, depending upon the amount of information cov- 
ered in the school curriculum at the grade attained by 
the individual. In middle adolescence there began to 
be a subjective interpretation of the way the persons 
in the picture ''felt" ; soon developing into much notice 
of the atmosphere imparted by details. The "sadness" 
of the falling leaves and the lover's departure "forever" 
were noted only in the upper high school or college 
freshman compositions. The writer^ concludes that 
"the great emotional imaginative change in adolescents 
comes after sixteen. It is the birth of a richer emo- 
tional life dependent upon a wider range of associa- 
tions, and upon physiological changes, and is the dawn 
of the most vivid imaginative period." The kind of 
material for this intellectual and emotional imagery is 
being accumulated in these years of middle adoles- 
cence, and the plastic mind is being given its per- 
manent "set." Recognition of this fact must underlie 
the educational treatment of companionship and 
recreation as well as of school problems. 

Individuality and Temperament. The inner life of 
every girl is the product of different original capacities, 
growing at different rates, and stimulated or retarded 



1 The Imagination of Adolescents, Walter Libby. American Journal of Psy- 
chology (1908), 19, p. 249. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 175 

by differing experiences. This product is the basis of 
the wide variation between individuals known popu- 
larly as "temperament." This is a topic consistently 
avoided by many psychologists, not because they do 
not recognize its vital importance, but because there is 
so little accurately known about it. The largest ele- 
ment in temperament is emotion. No scale has yet 
been devised for measuring emotions, and exact science 
is helpless before the immeafsurable. Our common use 
of the term itself varies greatly. A musician or an 
artist is spoken of as showing "temperament" in his 
work. Geniuses in many lines of creative work, men 
and women alike, are excused for explosions of nervous 
irritability on the ground of "temperament" (whereas 
in children we use only the first two syllables!). The 
most common usage of the word refers to the fact that 
ordinary individuals meet like situations in very dif- 
ferent ways. These differences seem to hold true for 
a given individual in many kinds of situations. For 
centuries the popular division has placed people in 
four great types.^ What scientific work has been done 
in investigating the subject, however, has proved that 
it is only the exceptional individual who can be fitted 
into any one of these "types." 

While we can afford to wait patiently until the 
efforts of scientific students shall give us reliable data 
and accurate terms for the main directions in which 
individuals vary, we may use "temperament" to desig- 

2 The classic division of temperaments was based on the idea that they were 
determined by the "humors" of the body, and were named Sanguine, or ardent; 
BiUous, or melancholy; Choleric, or energetic; and Phlegmatic, or deUberate. 
Lotze pointed out their correspondence respectively to the ages of childhood, 
adolescence, manhood, and age. Wundt defines these groups as relating to the 
individual's response to stimulus, as quick-weak, slow-weak, quick-strong, and 
Blow-strong. Giddings, in his Inductive Sociology, gives a very different basis of 
division, but comes out with a fourfold classification which includes all these and 
many other phases of social reactions. 



176 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

nate a real element in personal differences, if we have 
a mutual understanding of what it includes when used 
in this book. For example: w^e can imagine an abso- 
lutely w^ell-balanced girl who would meet any situa- 
tion according to its demands. If the situation were 
new, and worth consideration, it would be thought 
about and related to the rest of her knowledge. If it 
called for action, that action would be sufficiently 
prompt, yet sufficiently deliberated. If it aroused an 
emotion, the emotion would be enjoyed, or utilized as 
motive power, or steps taken to get rid of it, accord- 
ing to a just judgment of its worth or danger. Few 
persons, however, are thus well balanced. In most 
cases, whatever the situation, there is one form of 
resj)onse that habitually comes first because it is more 
^'satisfying" to the organism. So when we speak of 
a girl's "temperament" we mean that in her present 
state of development, when anything happens she 
would rather, and usually does, first, think about it 
and understand it; or do something about it; or just 
feel. Many different words are used to describe these 
habitual tendencies. As common as any are the phrases 
"intellectual," "impulsive," or "emotional" "types." 
We must recognize these differences, and it will do no 
harm to use the words if we recognize that they 
describe the results of original differences, modified 
and modifiable by habit, not something fatally pre- 
destined and determined and unchangeable; that indi- 
viduals differ in many degrees in each direction from 
the normal average in each response ; and that in very 
few cases do all situations call forth from the same 
individual the same "type" of response. 

"Instead of distinct types, there is a continuous 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 177 

gradation. Instead of a few ^pure' types or many 
'mixed' types, there is one type — mediocrity. . . . 
And it is highly probable that when actual measure- 
ments are made, mediocrity — a temperament moder- 
ately sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholy; 
moderately slow, quick, shallow, intense, narrow and 
broad; moderately slow-shallow, slow-intense-narrow; 
moderately everything — will be found to be the one 
real type." ^ The knowledge of the modifiability of 
temperament is a comfort both to the girl and to the 
educator. "If you have looked yourself over carefully, 
and don't like your temperament^ what are you going 
to do about itf asked one. It is a help to the person 
to whom such an appeal is made to know the previous 
ideals and habits which have produced the present 
state of affairs; then with a knowledge of the laws of 
habit-making and breaking, and of present resources 
in the way of ideals and motives, much can be done to 
remold the individual "temperament." 

It is an unfortunate mistake, and a common one, 
for a girl to dislike her own temperament merely be 
cause it is unlike that of her adoree or unlike that for 
which the adoree has expressed admiration. She must 
be stimulated by the idea of the social value of indi- 
viduality. Yet here, again, she must often be helped 
to see the difference between "uniqueness of person- 
ality" as an essential to her widest service, and that 
"queerness" which puts barriers between herself and 
others. She can search for the habits that are essen- 
tial to a useful and agreeable person of any "type," 
making such alterations as she finds are needed, while 
patiently watching for the development of her own 

3 Thorndike, (Number 92) Educational Psychology, vol. iii, p. 374. 



178 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

personality-materials from within before she limits the 
pattern of her building. 

Educational Urgency of the Crisis. Reconstruction is 
rapid and permanent. Any essential life habit which 
does not now join as a charter member will find a 
close corporation, and be likely to remain always more 
or less an outsider. In watching the lives of girls there 
often comes to the writer the memory of a childhood 
experience. Just before quarantine for an epidemic 
of smallpox shut the tiny village off from the world, 
a thoughtful mother provided, among other stores of 
necessities, a quantity of plaster of Paris. The re- 
sources of the family and of friendly neighbors in the 
way of colored inks and dye-stuffs and odd-shaped 
dishes, of paint box and decalcomanie pictures, made 
the pastime last through many weeks. Expert skill 
was developed in mixing the white powder with water 
to just the right consistency, and turning it into molds 
at the right moment. Sometimes an attempt was made 
to darken the color when it was too late; the fatal 
change had begun, and the whole thing crumbled into 
uselessness. 

To many of us our part in adding ingredients or 
stirring the mixture comes when the girPs life is just 
ready to "set." We may teach in a boarding school, 
or lead a club of high school or young working girls. 
Just as we have won some girl's affectionate con- 
fidence and could help, we discover that some instinct 
has been prematurely stimulated, or some information 
too long withheld, or some habit has gotten a strangle 
hold. Then comes the feeling of eager haste to get the 
compensating ingredient in in time, or of sorrowful 
pity at her belated attempt to reorganize a life which 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 179 

is shapeless and inadequate. To be sure, we are not 
working with plaster of Paris, and the crumbled pieces 
are not hopeless, but infinitely precious in their possi- 
bilities. But how much more could be done if all 
parents were wise, all men and women good and trust- 
worthy, and all communities wholesome! 

Integrating the Permanent Personality. Whether the 
process is sudden and rapid, or extended more grad- 
ually over a longer interval, the significance of this 
period is the emergence of the permanent personality. 
That personality will not be complete until maturity, 
but its main lines are shaped now. The early self was 
built out of experiences that were largely determined by 
forces of education and environment controlled from 
without. The new self may be formed upon a conscious 
ideal. The ideal itself must be chosen, either as a 
whole or in the parts that compose it, from that which 
lies within the girPs experience; and part of this expe- 
rience may be supplied by the imagination, by way of 
books. Or the ideal may even be merely negative, a 
revolt from the insistence of others, or intolerance 
of things as they are. But in contrast with the 
child's make-believe and dramatizing, which entered so 
easily into one character to leave it as readily for an- 
other, and which was so unconscious of the self which 
bound the real and imaginary experiences together, 
the adolescent is consciously hewing out her own 
life. 

The ideal result of this process is such an organiza- 
tion of all the forces and factors of the girPs life in 
due relation to each other that she can grow into a 
complete and unified woman, with no omission of any- 
thing essential, no misplacing of emphasis, no sever- 



180 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

ance into warring or alternating or suppressed factors, 
no warping of the direction of her growth, and with 
efficiency in her relations to her world. 

Sources of Possible Disintegration. Readjustment is 
always easier and more welcome if it can be in line 
with old habits. So great is the tension and fatigue 
under the double burden of growth and novelty, that 
anything which does not have to be done over again 
is doubly "satisfying to the organism.'' So the first 
danger is that the new character shall center about 
the incomplete self of her own childhood, and remain 
in "arrested development." If the habits and ideals of 
childhood have fostered a selfish interest, unless a 
higher center is reached by a rupture of the inclosing 
habit walls, the new powers will be used to minister 
to the same narrow desires. 

But often the force of the new desires and interests 
is as great in proportion as that of the old, and unless 
there is some one interest which dominates, the danger 
is that there shall be no center at all. With no sense 
of relative values, there can be no supreme value 
around which to organize the life, and no principle to 
guard from the danger in any novelty that may attract. 
People are pleasing, and approval is pleasing, and the 
girl secures the approval by whatever means will bring 
it from the people she chances to be with. Some- 
times, in vague recognition of her need of some stand- 
ard by which to select ideals and habits from the chaos 
of possibilities by which she is surrounded, a girl 
chooses some one person as pattern. If this person is 
no higher than her own unsocial level, her growth can 
only be warped and one-sided. And no matter how fine 
and high is any character thus chosen, no individual 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 181 

can ever serve as a mold for another to pour herself out 
in. 

Not only is there danger that a girl's life shall be 
self-centered, or uncentered, or falsely centered upon 
the life of another individual; there is grave danger 
that the life may become divided in itself. The cru- 
cial test of her success is making her life a unity. One 
of the easiest things for the human mind to do is to 
put together the things that go well together, and to 
keep the large divisions of this unconsciously classified 
material in separate compartments. Ideas, experi- 
ences and habits which thus fit smoothly form a unity 
which becomes the working character of the individual. 
All the rest, in one or more sets according to the way 
they fit each other, are kept separate like suits of 
clothes; and either worn alternately with the ^^every- 
day" character, or laid away to be donned only in the 
privacy of imagination. One extreme of this process 
results in the "multiple personality" with which pop- 
ular magazines have recently made many non-psycho- 
logical persons acquainted. In hysteria^ there are 
"split-off areas" not only of ideas, but also of sensa- 
tion and movement. The hypocrite is merely the man 
whose ideals and habits for one set of relations in life 
are entirely different from those by which he responds 
to other relations which the truer judgment of the com- 
munity finds are essentially the same. 

Perhaps the most universal, and certainly the sub- 
tlest, danger to character is the instinctive attempt to 
achieve an easy unity in the life by ignoring whatever 
is difficult or painful. The coward gets bodily away 



* Not the popular usage of the word for a nervous laughing and crying, but a 
mental illness which has a definite diagnosis. 



182 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

from the presence of the dreaded thing. The moral 
coward fills time and thought with anything which will 
prevent facing the issue. One kind of lie which chil- 
dren tell is an attempt to alter consequences by ignor- 
ing part of the facts in representing them to others. 
Escape from painful emotions is attempted by sup- 
pressing the entire "complex" of associations in which 
they arise, and the peace which comes from refusing 
to look at the disturbing elements of life is a great 
part of the power of that great modern religious move- 
ment which denies their very existence. But the 
trouble with most attempts to ignore realities within 
or without oneself is that other persons insist upon 
them, and ultimately they must be reckoned with. 
If truly moral character is to be achieved, the child 
must learn to tell the truth and face the consequences, 
to gain courage by not running away. Emotional poise 
is to be achieved only by placing the personal causes 
of the uncomfortable chagrin or jealousy or grief in 
true perspective in a large enough scale of life. Ade- 
quate manhood or womanhood is acquired only by 
determined effort to remedy the causes of evil, instead 
of ignoring them. 

The Girl's Personal Problem. While these facts and 
principles are true for all of human life, the dangers 
indicated are never more acute than in this period of 
the life of the girl. With the awakening of the new 
interests in early adolescence, and the further widen- 
ing of the intellectual horizon in this middle period, 
large areas of life are experienced for the first time. 
Often the first experience of anything causes sensations 
so intense as to be painful; the baby's first breath is 
a cry, and its eyes close against the first light. Some 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOKS 183 

of the facts of sin and misery which are apprehended 
in these crucial years cause such distress that the 
mind seeks to flee from anything which will recall 
them. Other facts are experienced with an accom- 
panying social disapproval that tends to make the 
unavoidable interest in them hide in secret places of 
the soul. Sometimes fine appreciations of beauty and 
moral goodness meet such lack of sympathy that in- 
stead of enriching the life they are separated from the 
realm of the actual, and perhaps wither aw^ay. The 
power of habit comes in to widen the separation 
through the lines of cleavage thus formed, and to lessen 
the ability of the divided self to "see life steadily and 
see it whole." 

Both for the girl and the educator, then, the goal of 
these years is that of building up a complete and uni- 
fied self, or, as it is sometimes worded by psychologists, 
of "integrating a personality." And the dangers and 
opportunities of this process are found in the choice 
of what may be called the "center of personalization." 
The desired result is the girl's own unique womanhood, 
broad enough to utilize all her developed possibilities 
for service, deep enough to insure stability in all the 
stress of life, and flexible enough to adapt her to any 
right demand of changing social conditions. 

From the girl's side this problem is intensely indi- 
vidual and personal. In one frame of mind the great, 
relentless world engulfs her as a tiny atom, and she 
can only hope to become something that will win its 
approval and secure its kindly treatment for herself. 
Then her problem is that of becoming that which she 
wishes to be. At other times the world is to her only 
a sum of individuals and what they have gotten out of 



184 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

each other and the material at hand, and her imperious 
will is to make it yield her all of which she dreams; 
or else with a sense of its failures, she wishes to 

.... grasp this sorry scheme of things entire 
And mold it nearer to her heart's desire. 

Then her problem is that of altering the sum of the 
universe by what she gets or what she gives. What 
she wishes to get, or to give, or to be will differ with 
every girl. 

SUMMARY 

The symmetry and grace of the new proi)ortions, 
proverbial in "sweet sixteen'^; the thrilling sense of 
limitless energy accomj)anying the new certainty of 
muscular control ; the intellectual and emotional devel- 
opment of romance; the consciousness of her own 
charm; the avidity for experience, more or less ten^- 
pered by habits of recklessness or of caution; the 
greater or less degree of instinctive satisfaction in affec- 
tion and its demonstrations, all together make up a 
peculiarly explosive mixture. It is explosive, but it is 
power. Its conservation and direction into lines in 
which mature womanhood shall be gloriously effective 
and satisfying is the puzzling but fascinating task of 
those persons who "count" with the girl. The task is 
made difficult by the swift and sudden shiftings of 
the center of gravity as new powers and new interests 
appear, which make unity seem a hopeless achievement. 
Yet the achievement of unifying all the factors of life 
into a consistent and proportionate whole is the essen- 
tial business of these years. The educator's part is 
so to direct affairs that the girl shall neither fail to 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 185 

find auy center for this organization, nor find it in 
the incomplete self of another or of her own child- 
hood, but in the unique plan of God for her unique 
self, patterned after the universal example of Jesus 
Christ. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 1, 32, 63, 68, 69, 75, (92), 106, 109, 111. 



CHAPTEK XI 

THE PERSONAL FACTORS 

Though we have seen clearly that the problem of 
middle adolescence is that of "integrating a person- 
ality/' there still remains the puzzling question of how 
this is to be done — of methods and of means. There 
are universal forces at work in girlhood at this period, 
and yet every girl is different, both in herself, in her 
modeling by habits and environment up till now, and 
in the outer forces which are available in the present. 
Thus the ideals, affections, purposes, and activities, 
actual and possible, are vastly different for every girl. 
Each is living in a dream world which she builds for 
herself, but it is the world of realities which must 
remodel her world of dreams, and in the process build 
her character. In the world of realities there is 
nothing so real as persons, and nothing has greater 
effect upon the life now forming than the persons that 
touch it. 

Social Motives: 1. Public Opinion. At any age it is 
instinctive to care for the good opinion of others, and 
to care most for the approval of the persons who are 
of most importance in one's world. In childhood this 
importance is attached to those members of the family 
group found by experience to have the greatest power 
in satisfying wants. In the wider world of adolescence 
greater variation is shown in the persons who are 
chosen as satisfying. Sometimes habit and affection 
coincide, and the family group remains the strong- 

186 



THE PERSONAL FACTORS 187 

est single force. Usually^ however, there is at some 
time during these years a period when the public opin- 
ion of her "crowd" is the final judgment for the con- 
sideration of the girl. This development is the nearest 
approach in the girPs life to the "gang" domination of 
the boy. Curiously enough, although she matures 
faster, it is a phenomenon of her middle adolescence, 
just when the boy is outgrowing his exclusive gang 
interest. Perhaps it is a combination of the organiz- 
ing ability, common to both boys and girls at this age, 
with the latent gang instinct of the girl, to which 
social custom has denied earlier expression. From 
another standpoint it might be said that the chum has 
become multiple, different girls being required for the 
understanding and stimulation of the many-sided new 
interests and emotions. 

While girls vary in "strong-mindedness," there are 
probably few girls of fifteen or sixteen who would not 
rather be wrong than be ridiculous in the eyes of "the 
crowd." Not to have the particular style of felt tam- 
o'-shanter, or fullness or scantness of skirt which "all 
the girls" are wearing can blot the sunshine out of 
the sky. Except in small fads which emphasize her 
individuality, like the colors she "always" wears, it is 
hard to expect a girl to be "different" alone. This 
causes one of the acutest problems in the family whose 
standards and traditions are higher than those of the 
majority of the community. The parents are conscious 
of the broader world in which their standards are 
accepted. The girl experiences only the contempt of 
her present world for that which "sets itself up to be 
better." 

2. Desire for Leadership. Fortunately, along with 



188 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

this extreme instinctive sensitiveness to the opinions 
of her fellows (which sociologists tell us has been use- 
ful in "conforming the individual to the group and so 
conserving race achievement") goes the parallel instinct 
of domination. This seeks to compel the group to 
adopt the standpoint of the strong individual (and the 
same sociologists tell us that this is useful in provid- 
ing "variations" from which progress may arise). Suc- 
cessful leadership is composed of varying combinations 
of qualities, but one of the instinctive desires of this 
age is for the power which leadership imparts. There 
is pleasure in following the common standard, but it 
is feeble in comparison with that of carrying the 
standard which others follow. The greater the number 
of persons to follow and applaud, the greater is the 
"satisfyingness." The wise parent will enlist this pride 
of leadership to help the daughter shape the public 
opinion of her group. A reputation for "originality" 
may be acquired by using the wider experience access- 
ible through the home and a "novel and successful 
idea" in entertaining, as recorded by the local papers, 
may open the way for adoption of other social ideals 
quietly instigated from the same source. The wise 
teacher, also, does not promulgate decrees ; she gathers 
the little group of leaders, helps them collect their own 
data, lets them come to their own conclusions, and then 
lets them have the fun of "making the thing go." 

3. Ideal Standards. Ways of thinking and doing are 
"satisfying" to the self both from the approval of 
others and from the comfortableness of habit. So 
strong is the latter factor that the only force which 
can influence a person to make the necessary effort to 
change the habitual ways of the present self is the 



y 



THE PEESONAL FACTOES 189 



approval of others for a different self. Says James,^ 
^^Wlieii for motives of honor and conscience I brave 
the condemnation of my own family, club, and ^set,' 
. . . I am always inwardly strengthened in my 
course and steeled against the loss of my actual social 
self by the thought of other and better possible social 
judges than those whose verdict goes against me now." 
This ability to balance the approval of higher judges, 
who are not present, against the disapproval of those 
whose amusement or sneer one sees, is a great moral 
achievement, and one of slow growth. It is one of the 
most effective services of the older friend to introduce 
the girl to those ''better possible social judges," by 
way both of books and of living persons. It is the 
''social approval" that she sees given to the missionary, 
the social worker, the actress, or the artist that deter- 
mines her secret ambition. So primitive is this instinc- 
tive attitude that the conviction of the approval of 
such a course of conduct (if it were known by the 
"judge" she is certain will never find it out) may lead 
to heroic attempts at self-effacing service, or surrep- 
titious kindness, or inconspicuous modesty. 

The Need and the Dangers of Concrete Ideals. The 
ideal self and its ideal judges are made of parts taken 
from many sources. The motive power of this imagina- 
tive creation is great ; but at this age there is an over- 
whelming tendency to "objectify" ideals of goodness, 
wisdom, and truth in living persons of her acquaint- 
ance. There is also a tendency toward an exclusive 
intimacy with this ideal, who is the (only!) person 



1 Bibliography, Number 63, p. 191. The chapter on "The Self," — Chapter XII 
pp. 176-194 — is one of those delightful and stimulating "sermons" which James 
was accustomed to interweave in his text. This and the chapter on "Habit" are 
worthy of periodic rereading by both girls and older persons. 



190 GIELHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

who has worth and ''understanding" to meet her deep- 
est needs. This privacy of understanding develops 
mysticism and symbolism, which intertwine with all 
the tendencies previously discussed in an intricate 
mass of sentiments, passions, loyalties, and purposes, 
both sublime and ridiculous, dynamic and paralyzing. 

If a girl is to meet her problems successfully, she 
must have help, consciously given. She must see how 
persons who are well adjusted to life meet the world. 
If she sees only the outside of their lives, their acts, 
her problem is much more difficult than if these expe- 
rienced persons share with her their motives and con- 
victions. As her ideals of character are gathered 
from men as well as from women, strong manhood and 
womanhood in visible form are imperative needs to 
the young girl. Yet she may bestow upon the most 
ordinary person all the characteristics of her highest 
ideal, and then render to this idol of her own making 
all the homage of her soul. If she does not have help 
to discriminate between the good but often common- 
place individual who is the ''object of fixation of her 
subjective ideal" and the elements which exist only in 
that subjective ideal, she may pour herself out in a 
devotion which can only warp and impoverish the 
growth of her possible future self. She must be helped 
to see, so clearly that no sudden passion of affection 
can ever blind her to it, that no one person is large 
enough to serve for a mold for all of her personality, 
no one relationship complete enough to bound the world 
for her. 

Older Friends. It is clear from all this that now is 
the time of the greatest influence and power of the 
adoree. Experience and wisdom have become more 



THE PERSONAL FAOTOES 191 

important than mere loveliness, and the mature woman 
is apt to be found most "interesting." If the woman 
recognizes in the girl an equality, not of experience, 
but of womanly feeling and point of view, and does not 
thrust upon her dogmatic advice but merely helps her 
to see her problems from a new angle, the woman's 
help will be eagerly sought. "She knows I will not 
pry," said a woman about a troubled young girl. 
"When she thinks I can help her she will let me know." 
The well-balanced girl is apt to have several of these 
older friends. That one will be most influential whose 
"unshockable" understanding reaches most phases of 
her bewilderingly many-sided interests, or goes deepest 
into the problems she feels to be most vital. For the 
fullest use of her opportunities the adoree must be, in 
whatever of the girl's ideals she embodies, "unsmash- 
able." And she must also be clear-headed enough not 
to "try to combine two human relationships," which, 
as President Henry Churchill King reminds us, is 
always to belittle them both. She is neither mother 
nor lover, but permanent friend and temporary embodi- 
ment of the girl's ideal. 

The incarnations of ideal womanhood may be numer- 
ous, and it may depend upon circumstances and upon 
the girl whether they are successive or simultaneous. 
The degree of devotion also varies in individuals. "I 
don't think I ever was so ^crazy' about anybody as 
most girls," was the judicial reminiscence of one 
young woman regarding her girlhood. The mothering 
instincts are becoming more definite in the girl's con- 
sciousness, also, and with the new inner understand- 
ing her own mother receives a belated share of ideal- 
izing. Often mother now takes and keeps first place in 



192 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the girl's gallery of ideal women. As truly as this is 
the greatest opportunity for the older women whom 
she idealized to mold the life which is now taking 
permanent shape, perversions of this affection are never 
so serious as now. 

The Hero and the Lover. With some girls it seems 
that feminine opinion really doesn't matter, and the 
only decisive influence is masculine. The place usually 
taken by the adoree may be filled by some man; and, 
if he is worthy of the hero-worship, and the "man's 
point of view" which she obtains is admirable, she may 
lose little. But with all girls the interest in boys is 
normally at its height. From a general interest in the 
species it has developed into a serious consideration 
of individual boys, one at a time. It is quite proper 
and fitting that the other half of a girl's world should 
be masculine. Ideal manhood as well as ideal woman- 
hood must be incarnate. As the girl objectifies one in 
the adoree, so she is apt to put the halo of romance 
around the head of any youth whom chance brings into 
the field of her attention. "In love with love," she 
responds to the first luxury of being loved by the con- 
viction that she has found her destined Lover. Ordi- 
narily, a girl needs but a little wise guidance to see 
things in perspective, to be willing to grow big enough 
to be worthy of all that love must give and demand, and 
to be sure that she shall make no mistake. It appeals to 
her common sense that "he" must have his growth and 
find his way to where she is before she can recognize 
and choose him. If she is prematurely "paired," as is 
the custom in some provincial circles of society, she 
may miss him altogether. This is the age of beginning 
numerous experimental "intimate friendships" which 



THE PERSONAL FACTORS 193 

last until the real choice is made in later adolescence 
or early maturity. The greater the number of these 
comradeships, and the wider their range of interests, 
the greater is the surety for permanent happiness in 
the final choice. 

This is the age in the boy of the first fervent, senti- 
mental love. It depends largely upon the girl's char- 
acter and poise what shall be the result to both of 
them. Much the same line of argument against "spoon- 
ing," or playing at love-making, as that cited on pp. 
131ff., now holds good. Each is more nearly mature, 
mentally and physically, and instincts are stronger. 
The impersonal dreaminess of the innocent girl and the 
reverent chivalry of the unspoiled boy form a double 
insulation against danger, which is broken only by 
physical contact. The girl must understand the signifi- 
cance of her emotions and of those which she arouses. 
The thrill that runs like wildfire through her veins is 
not to be flippantly kindled; nor is she to kindle it in 
his. It can quickly burn to ashes; or, if she values it 
enough to guard it, it can become the general altar- 
fire of the home. That she shall understand her power 
and use it wisely, and wisely refrain from its use, is 
what parents and older friends are for. At this age, not 
to know of passion is indeed "not to know the pistol 
was loaded," or "not to know the water was over a foot 
deep" under the rocking boat. She must know, so that 
no temporary excitement can ever make her forget. 

Sometimes it may prove that a romance of this 
earlier time leads to a wise and happy marriage in 
later years. It is probable that it never can do so 
if the attention of either or both of them is centered 
exclusively on the emotional side of the affection. 



194 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Here is a place where social opinion has great influ- 
ence. If love affairs are the thing, the girl who de- 
sires her place in her set will achieve one or more, 
even if she has to imagine herself into them. And if 
this sentimentality is laughed at or repressed by family 
and older friends, it will promptly receive the most 
exaggerated importance in her mind. Yet there is 
danger in mere ignoring. Frank comradeship between 
the girl and her father and mother is the best safe- 
guard. The adoree too has much influence in this 
sphere also, if she chooses to exert it. "Who was that 
nice-looking boy I saw skating with you last night?" 
" 'Harry' seems to be taking a big share of your time ; 
aren't you going to bring him to call so I can get 
acquainted too? I shall soon be jealous!" And the 
girl with shy pleasure shares her two friends with 
each other, and anxiously seeks the verdict of each 
about the other. 

The Chaperon as Friend and Educator. The older per- 
son's oversight of the girl's companionships with boys, 
singly or in groups, brings up the problem of the chap- 
eron. The attitude of young people toward this func- 
tionary varies in different circles from hostility and 
resentment to a matter-of-course acceptance which may 
be either affectionate or indifferent. Two young busi- 
ness girls from a boarding home in a large city were 
planning a week-end house party at the lake, during 
which boy friends were to be guests at some meals. 
"Will Mrs. X chaperon us?" asked one. 

"Have we got to be followed by any old cat? Do 
they think I'm the kind that's got to be watched?" 
stormed the other in a fury. 

"If you're so afraid, perhaps you'll 'bear watching'," 



THE PERSONAL FACTORS 195 

retorted the first. ^^Pve never been with a crowd that 
didn't care what folks might say." 

A tenderly reared girl said to an older confidante: 
"Sometimes 'the bunch' at home would forget and stay 
pretty late, and it was hard on mother. But she never 
failed me. Sometimes she would go into the other 
room with her mending, but the boys knew I was the 
kind of a girl who was taken care of. But last summer 
I boarded alone in the country for a while. A boy was 
calling on me, and it was not more than half -past eight 
when I discovered that everybody had gone to bed 
and left us alone, and then he tried to make me sit 
on his lap. Why should they think I was 'that kind' ?" 
A girl in an Eastern school returned, late at night, 
from a drive with a young man in a single buggy. She 
could not understand the teacher's attitude. "We lost 
the road" seemed to the girl sufficient explanation; 
and "My mother wouldn't have dreamed of not trust- 
ing me" was her challenge. The teacher thought of 
the distant ranch on which the girl's sixteen years had 
been spent. 

"Did your mother know the boys you went with?" 
"Of course she did ; we had always played together." 
"How long had she, or you, known this one?" 
The girl weakened her defiance: "She didn't know 
him at all, of course, for I never saw him till I came 
here three weeks ago. And it was a little scarey so far 
from a house." 

Some girls would no sooner think of attending a 
party without a chaperon than without wraps to cover 
their pretty frocks. She is a badge of propriety; and 
she is "checked at the door" with other things not 
needed till the home-going, or else ranged along the 



196 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTEK 

wall with the other superfluous furniture. The pro- 
prieties being satisfied, why should anyone bother 
about her as a person? Yet these same thoughtlessly 
rude girls may find on going to school in another town 
that no party is complete without one of the favorite 
teachers or mothers, and that the boys vie with each 
other in attentions to her. "Perhaps it is long prac- 
tice/' shrewdly said one boy, "but Mrs. B can cer- 
tainly beat any girl in town for giving a fellow a good 
time." And the girls took observation lessons ! 

In America the institution of chaperonage has been 
greatly modified from its continental practices. While 
in the freedom of the younger settlements the com- 
munity control seemed often to be as effective when 
no representative of it was actually present, there is 
a permanent need for the social cooperation of older 
friends with the young people in all their good times. 
It was clearly expressed by a popular and fun-loving 
girl: "I never have a real good time unless mother is 
along. I'm apt to forget when I get to fooling, and 
go too far and do something I'm sorry for afterward. 
But when mother is where I can look at her every few 
minutes, if she smiles I know I'm all right; and if she 
looks at me ^that way,' I can go to her and find out 
what I ought to do." 

All mothers cannot always "go along," and, alas ! not 
every mother has the needed sympathy with the "tire- 
some silliness" of the young things when they repeat 
the gambols of her own youth. The chaperon is the 
collective parent, the outside conscience and common 
sense of the crowd. When the purpose is mutually 
understood, cooperation, which is essential for effec- 
tiveness, can be counted on from any group of whole- 



THE PERSONAL FACTORS 197 

some youngsters. And the older person who goes in 
the spirit of real cameraderie will not be bored ! Said 
one high-school teacher, "I don't see why some of the 
teachers dread the school parties and hate to *take 
their turn.' I'm really hurt and disappointed if I'm 
not invited!" It is no wonder she was seldom 
"slighted." 

SUMMARY 

Early adolescence is intensely individualistic, both 
in its self-assertion and in the monopolizing tendency 
of its afifection for the chum and the adoree. While 
these personal affections continue with unabated force 
and influence during these crucial mid-adolescent 
years, their relative positions are altered, and modi- 
fied by the growing interests of group activity and 
leadership, of romance, and of the developing maternal 
instinct. The chum and the adoree are now usually 
multiplied into a number of individuals, forming the 
"crowd," and the group of older friends. Among the 
latter the girl's own mother now often has first place. 
The boy admirer is for the average girl the most import- 
ant person in her life, and the helpfulness or harm of 
his influence will depend upon the educator's wisdom. 
Matter-of-fact good comradeship and many objective 
interests are the safeguards against unwholesome senti- 
mentality, with either the boy lover, the adoree, or 
the girl friend. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 1, 21, 22, 32, 49, 53,63, (80), 105, 107, 112, 135, 
137, 141, 147, 148. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 

"Nothing is more certain than that each generation 
longs for a reassurance as to the value and charm of 
life, and is secretly afraid lest it lose its sense of the 
youth of the earth. ... It is doubtless true that for 
the mass of men the message is never so unchallenged 
and so invincible as when embodied in youth itself. 
. . . [Now] . . . for the first time [young girls] are 
being prized more for their labor power than for their 
innocence, their tender beauty, their ephemeral gayety, 
. . . their immemorial ability to reaffirm the charm 
of existence. And yet . . . the girl announces to the 
world that she is here. She demands attention to the 
fact of her existence, she states that she is ready to 
live, to take her place in the world. "^ 

The Changed Environment. The little bundle of 
instincts and emotions and ideas and desires, all "un- 
differentiated" and unformed but palpitatingly living, 
is going out to meet the new stimuli of sensations and 
ideals and passions and persons, good and bad, adult 
and youthful. For our present American life deter- 
mines that, for a large majority of its young girls, this 
crisis period shall be spent in surroundings almost 
wholly new. It corresponds with the high-school age, 
or with legal entering into "gainful occupations." If 

iThe Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, (Number 1), pp. 3, 5, 8. It is 
earnestly urged that this book and Numbers 23 and 31 be read as a backgroimd 
to the discussions in this chapter. Space forbids sufficient quotation; and sum- 
marizing would fail to give adequate emphasis, or the convincing atmosphere of 
reality. 

198 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 199 

the girl enters high school, it means a change of build- 
ing, of teachers, of subjects studied, of method, and of 
routine. For many it means also boarding away from 
the family, and coming home only for the week-end. 
To some girls boarding school brings a segregation into 
a little world by itself, very real, but unlike any other. 
If the girl goes to work, either with or without a brief 
business or technical preparation, most of her waking 
hours will be spent in a world new to her, and of which 
her mother also rarely knows anything. In some of 
these environments a girl may mature faster in one 
year than in some other in four. A girl in an office 
or factory may meet all the ugliness and seaminess of 
life, or, on the other hand, she may be safer from 
corruption than the girl who is in some select school. 
She may receive an indelible stamp from some teacher 
or forewoman, or fellow worker or classmate, whose 
influence and very existence are unsuspected by those 
who care most for her welfare. Too frequently, except 
for her immediate family, those concerned in this 
process of molding and remolding must ''begin in the 
middle and guess at the beginning,'' like the serial in 
a newly-subscribed-for magazine. 

Society's Responsibility. If, in the recreation of the 
small group, society needs to be represented by some 
one who acts as chaperon, there are greater responsi- 
bilities resting on Society for its whole generation of 
youth. The community itself, as a whole or by ade- 
quate representation, must see that every growing 
young girl within its bounds has living and working 
conditions that will enable her to give back to it the best 
of which she is capable. It must also see that every girl 
has wholesome recreation, under right conditions, and 



200 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

with ample and proper time for it. These responsi- 
bilities are beginning to be familiar, at least as ideas, 
under such captions as "factory legislation," "housing 
laws,'^ "minimum wage," "technical high schools," 
"vocational guidance," "trade schools," "continuation 
schools," "efficiency tests," "social centers," "municipal 
recreation centers," and allied new terms which come 
into use week by week. But while Society is getting 
at these problems, thousands of fourteen- and sixteen- 
year-old girls are getting their working papers. In the 
new environment of school or office or workshop, the 
fluid character will find its mold before legislative 
committees are done taking evidence. 

Adjustment Ultimately Individual. And no matter 
how greatly conditions are improved by collective 
activity, there will never cease to be need for personal 
interest and affection. The individual girl must find 
a living, individual person to help her, or else she must 
meet alone her problem of things as they are.^ Read 
Miss Addams's A New Conscience and an Ancient 
Evil, till you must help to remedy social and economic 
conditions. And then realize that if "no philanthropic 
association can hope to help a girl once overwhelmed 
by desperate temptation, unless it is able to pull her 
back into the stream of kindly human fellowship," the 
only adequate means of keeping the young girl safe in 

2 Girls who work have often to meet situations where their instinctive repulsion 
may be sufficient protection, if only they know how to make it effective. Any 
woman whose level and fearless gaze has sent a workman or foreman away abashed 
when he attempted famiUarity with a girl in a noonday club meeting, and has seen 
the girl's relief, will want to see to it that every working girl knows enough of the 
"art of expression" to prevent any innocently ignorant pose from being miscon- 
strued as a warrant for familiarity. And every girl ought also to know some man 
or woman who can be her refuge and champion. The first agonizing reaction to an 
insult is usually, "What is there wrong with me that any one should think he could?" 
She should know before she goes to work that there are men with diseased minds 
and affections who may insult anybody, and thus be reheved of the paralysis of 
shame. And she should know to whom to report any insult without fear of "losing 
her job" thereby. 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 201 

this social maelstrom is to ''remember those wise words 
of Count Tolstoy : 'We constantly think that there are 
circumstances in which a human being can be treated 
without affection, and there are no such circum- 
stances/ " 

Vocation: Present and Future. First, as to the work 
itself. The question is not, Could she have chosen 
better? but, If her work is not well fitted to her, can 
she find and prepare for something better? If there 
are evening courses in "book studies" and in crafts, 
in Young Women's Christian Association or public 
school, has she the health to make use of them? Has 
her ambition the stamina to persist in face of indiffer- 
ence at home and the cry of the eager young life for 
pleasure? Somebody to believe in her often creates 
the affirmative answer to these questions. 

Whether she enjoys her work, is indifferently content, 
or rebels at its drudgery, depends a good deal on both 
health and temperament. Usually the excitement of 
the new surroundings, the interest of learning the new 
process, and the independence of earning her own 
money make the first few months enjoyable. After 
that, monotony and fatigue begin to have their effect. 
When the work is done under healthful conditions and 
hours are not too long, the danger of actual fatigue — 
"the decreased ability to do work as the result of con- 
tinuous work" — is not serious. Depression is not so 
much from fatigue of brain and muscle combinations 
which she does use as from the unsatisfied clamor of 
those she does not use. These deprivations are the 
serious detriment to developing character. Unused 
activities mean fading motor memories; unused in- 
terests mean fading idea memories. This is the tragedy 



202 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of the young girl at work. x\t the very time when her 
future womanhood demands that she shall do and see 
and feel and know as many kinds of things as possible, 
her muscles are made specialized parts of a machine, 
and her active mind must whirl about a limited series 
of interests and memories like a squirrel in a cage. 
The spread of vocational training will mean that in 
the future more girls will be able to know about the 
forest which they cannot see for the trees (while they 
are kept busy until dark picking leaves) ; but the girl 
now employed must be individually guided to avail 
herself of the temporary supplemental helps, that her 
work also may have the dignity of interest. 

Even when the family is able, with or without great 
sacrifice, to let the young daughter finish her secondary 
schooling, the question of vocation is usually upper- 
most in her mind, and has its place in shaping her life. 
"What am I good for?" is her eager query to an un- 
known self and an unknown world. She feels that she 
must know her port before she completes her cargo of 
information and of skill. All skill, of muscles or of 
brain, is the product of complex habits built up from 
instinctive responses to sensory or ideal stimulation. 
An instinctive reaction which has never been called 
forth can, evidently, not be used as building material. 
It is the moral responsibility of the educator, whether 
teacher, parent, or friend, to see that enough kinds of 
stimuli are provided to arouse all the girl's latent 
powers. Her own interest in this voyage of exploration 
must also be maintained, or she may make port before 
her own country is discovered. 

Many who are responsible for teaching the public 
school curriculum are awake to its present Inadequacy 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 203 

and glaring defects. But not until the great com- 
munity of those who have interests in the young boys 
and girls who are being taught wakes up to this prob- 
lem can we hope for any real solution. When "ordi- 
nary parents'- realize that the school system is not 
something fatal and inevitable, but something re- 
sponsive to their real demands, its progress will be 
more rapid. When we recover from the fallacy that 
"equality" of opportunity means identity of program, 
the discussion will no longer be, What shall "the cur- 
riculum" contain? but. What curriculum shall be 
arranged to meet the capacities and the taste of this 
girl ? It is beyond the scope of this book to enter into 
the education of the girl inside the schoolroom. But 
it is part of its scope to urge that every friend of indi- 
vidual girls shall become intelligent as to the school- 
room education which she ought to receive, and as to 
how far that ideal is being realized. 

Recreation. Whatever part of the girl's time is occu- 
pied by school work, it is in the rebound of the free 
hours that help is most possible and most needed. 
Free ! How the muscles need to stretch and flex, with 
what energy is left ! How the mind needs to be guided 
from its squirrel cage into leafy paths. The essentials 
for anything that shall "get" the girl in these hours are 
those factors which appeal to the most fundamental and 
primitive instincts. There must be chance for motion ; 
there must be pleasant stimulation of the senses of 
sight, touch, and hearing ; the thoughts must be stirred 
in channels that are romantic as well as intellectual; 
and there must be companionship of her own age, both 
girls and boys. Where to-day does she find all these 
demands most simply met, and with the least effort 



204 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

on the part of iier tired self? Unfortunately, it is in 
the moving picture, the theater, the dance hall, and on 
the street with its lights, its shop windows, and its 
ever-moving crowd. 

Years ago there appeared in St. Nicholas one of 
Stockton's delightful tales^ of a Boy and a Sage who 
heliDed a Queen. This Queen had a wonderful museum, 
filled with buttonholes! Buttonholes made on every 
kind of cloth, with every kind of thread, in every pos- 
sible variation of buttonhole stitch, and collected from 
every known land. The Queen had educational aspira- 
tions for her people, and she grieved that no one ever 
visited her museum but once. Finally she put in prison 
every one who would not visit it, and soon every one in 
the kingdom was in prison I There was no one left to 
do the work of the kingdom. Just then the Sage 
appeared. He told her to let them out and he would 
see what he could do. So he found a band of Benevo- 
lent Robbers, who stole things from thieves and re- 
turned them to their owners, and lived on the bounty 
of gratitude. The Boy had just joined this band. 
Under the Sage's direction, the Robbers, on a chosen 
night, entered every house and wakened every inmate, 
demanding "What do you want most of anything in 
the world to see ?" With these answers they proceeded 
to a magician, who supplemented their own stores with 
every kind of object of the "ruling passions" thus re- 
vealed. Now, the Boy, in his rounds, had grown more 
and more unhappy. Finally he found one little lad too 
bewildered to speak. "Say fishing tackle I — You know 
it's fishing tackle!" The frightened lad said it, and it 
was duly recorded. When the new museum was fin- 

3 Published in a book collection, The Queen's ^Museum and Other Tales. 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 205 

ished the Queen went about and before every case in 
the great buildings she saw a rapt admirer. Happiest 
of all was the Boy, standing before fishing tackle, of 
every age and clime. Then the Queen returned con- 
tent to the room set apart for her former collection, 
and pored happily over her buttonholes. 

For a long time after girls began to work during 
daylight and to come out to play at night, the various 
attempts of churches and individuals to "do something 
for" them were like the Queen's museum. People whose 
recreation was reading Browning, or making im- 
promptu epigrams while serving tea in a softly lighted 
drawing room, or listening to Wagner operas or to 
lectures on the idealistic school in fiction, honestly and 
generously tried to share their ^^buttonholes." The 
present increased success of church and settlement and 
Young Women's Christian Association in social and 
educational work is due to "benevolent robbers" who 
recovered for them the knowledge of girls' needs and 
desires which was being used by commercialized amuse- 
ments. These alone had provided the "fishing tackle." 
Now we know; it is a question of effort. "You can 
have anything in this world that you want, if you only 
want it enough/^ There have been those who wanted 
the girl's money "enough" to get it. The one who 
wants the girl's soul, to build it up into steadfast 
character, must want it enough never to give up. It 
often seems a moral test of the educator friend rather 
than of the girl. Those who would know how to make 
play a means of culture and real recreation have access 
to a growing literature.^ Pageants, festivals, folk 
dances, chorals, musical fetes, carefully chosen moving 

4 See BibUography, Numbers 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 124. 



206 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

pictures, and the dramatizing of literature and history 
are among the means available. 

Spending. Those who know the working girl of this 
age know^ the tragedies and bitterness which may arise 
over the disposal of her meager wages. The girl who 
has a sufficient wage to cover her actual needs, and 
w^ho has full power to spend it, does not always, at 
fifteen, prove a wise or successful financier. School 
leaders are agitating the training of girls for spending 
as well as for earning. It surely seems that decimals 
and division might be taught as effectively from an 
arithmetic whose examples should deal with dress 
materials and trimmings, with groceries and vegetables 
and furniture, as from one where the examples are 
problems in digging wells or in "false discount." Every 
woman who is interested in the welfare of girls should 
cooperate with the teachers in upper grades and high 
school who are trying to fit the course of studies to 
the real life of boys and girls. But the girls who are 
already at work must be helped, one by one, to a knowl- 
edge of values, of prices, and of suitability in material. 
This is something that can be done for girls by many 
a woman who would be frightened at the thought of 
"interfering" in the grammar school course. 

The girl who lives at home, whether in school or at 
work, and the girl away at school, need no less to learn 
the art of spending wisely. If womanhood is to bring 
the responsibility for thousands of dollars, why should 
the habit-forming years permit carelessness or igno- 
rance of money values? And if in the modest home 
of the future a few dollars will make a vast difference, 
now is the time to learn the distinction between parsi- 
mony and economy. Accuracy in account-keeping is 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 207 

a habit to be early acquired, and the making of a budget 
is an invaluable practice. This implies, of course, that 
the nonworking girl should know how much she may 
count on, which is another way of saying that she 
should have an allowance and be responsible for its 
use.^ Whether five dollars per week must cover board 
and all other necessities, or part of the home and per- 
sonal expenses ; or whether one has a check book and a 
monthly allowance of generous proportions, the best 
possible moral training in seeing proportional values 
in life is planning ahead what may be spent for food, 
clothing, and shelter, for books and music and amuse- 
ment, for gifts and charitable work. 

Romance and Life. Society as a whole has a deep 
interest in this period in a girl's life. That life is 
settling the relative places of its foundations. In her 
^'preparation for living" what place is being given to her 
contribution to future family life? Is it too much 
to expect at this early stage that she shall be gaining 
a definite and clear purpose as to her own attitude? 
Love, in the sense her romantic reading has taught 
her to know it, occupies a large proportion of her 
thought. Is her idea of it selfish or social? Our in- 
terest in the welfare of the individual girl also makes 
us anxious that in marriage as in other occupations 
she shall not make decisions till the evidence is all in, 
nor prevent a greater by a lesser good. 

What differences in original nature and in observed 
experience of others are revealed in the following pas- 
sionate outbursts of two young girls: ''If I thought I 
should ever have to be a mother, I should want to die 
right now !" "I idUI not be an old maid ! I will get 

s Compare Bibliography, Numbers 32, 83. 



208 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

married! I irill have children!" Fortunately, the first 
girl's ideas of life became more normal. The other is 
radiantly hai)py with her nine children — but what if 
one of a hundred possible causes had denied them to 
her? Thousands of women with as great possibilities 
of wifely and motherly affection as she are denied 
marriage. What is the place of this race instinct and 
its accompanying emotions in a being who is seeking, 
practically and actively, to be what God meant? 

First and foremost, love is part of life, which is 
a whole. It is neither the whole of life, nor is it sepa- 
rated from the rest of life. Like any other relation 
of affection, the privileges and responsibilities are 
mutual, and have the same ethical standards that 
govern privileges and responsibilities anywhere. The 
conception of loving must be moral to its last fiber. 
Many a girl has the illusion that marriage is a condi- 
tion in which she is to have always and absolutely her 
own way, and be adored ; without a thought of the per- 
manent conditions of being adorable. The problem of 
adjusting two personalities so that each may grow with- 
out growing away from the other, and each is unselfish 
without losing individuality, ought at least to be con- 
sidered in her scheme of love. The separation of moral 
purpose from the emotional thrill, in the ideals of so 
many undeveloped women, is the cause of uncounted 
needless tragedies. 

Current magazine fiction is responsible for the selfish 
and sordid view of love which is held by so many 
girls. A "genius for men" is held up to be admired 
as an artistic ability, and said to be decried only by 
the envious nonpossessor. It is true that women differ 
in susceptibility to masculine appeal as much as in an 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 209 

"ear for music," and in the fascination which they 
unconsciously exert over men as in their power to 
sing. The fact, as a fact, is to be taken into account. 
Unusual power to stimulate interest and affection and 
desire is not an excuse for using the power for selfish 
ends; nor does a very limited possibility of pleasing 
excuse one for being crabbed and contemptuous. The 
trouble with so much of the cheap, erotic current litera- 
ture is that it makes the instinctive emotions and 
thrills appear to be the whole of loving. To have a 
voice like Gadski or Farrar is a wonderful gift, and to 
listen to such a voice is a rapturous experience never 
to be forgotten. But what if there were no other kinds 
of voices to sing tired children to sleep? And the 
voices that cannot even carry a tune may make quite 
as loving harmonies in the play of children, or in 
the votes of women on a philanthropic committee. The 
ordinary person has some bit of the power that is 
unstinted in the genius. That is what makes us feel 
akin to each whose fame is sung in our ears. We all 
have possibilities, the same in kind ; and if only circum- 
stances had been different, and our dower of capacity 
a little less limited in amount, the "possible self" might 
have been that illustrious one. And when one is young 
enough, the possible self may still be that one which is 
most acclaimed. That is the role she is sure to take 
on the inner stage. 

Literature and current opinion must be made to 
help the girl to see that while the desire to be pleasing 
is normal, it is quite abnormal to think of the instinc- 
tive reflexes of emotion and affection as comprising 
the whole interest of life. The girl must realize that 
she must marry not only her lover, but a citizen of the 



210 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

community, a neighbor, a man with a business to attend 
to (if he is to pay their bills!) ; with friends that she 
does not know, and with a family that thinks more of 
him than of her. And she must realize that this condi- 
tion is mutual. The successful carrying out of these 
complex relationships requires skill. This skill is 
attained by practice in "getting along with" people 
of many kinds, under many circumstances. The pres- 
ent circumstances of home life and school or business 
companionships, the tired father and mother, the differ- 
ing interests of brothers and sisters, the personalities 
of teachers or employers, may all be utilized in acquir- 
ing this skill that shall make her future husband her 
permanent lover^ and her future home a place of peace 
and joy. 

SUMMARY 

And so the new conditions of these changing, crucial 
years must be utilized not only for the girl's individual 
advantage and development, but for the good of the 
whole society of which she is a growing part. The 
interests of society in this new individual center about 
her contributions to it in work, in pleasure, and in the 
family of the future. Society is responsible to her in 
its provision for a present home environment that shall 
be wholesome and uplifting; for education which shall 
fit her for efficiency in earning and spending, for doing 
good work and enjoying a recreative leisure, and for 
understanding and appreciating "all that is human"; 
for occupational guidance; for sanitary and moral 
working conditions and adequate wages; and, most of 
all, for sympathetic guidance and interest and example. 
Only through individual persons who are true and 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS 211 

loving and upright and unselfish can she gain the ideal 
standard which she is to preserve. The torch placed 
in her hand must be alight before she can preserve its 
fire of life for her children yet unborn. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, S, 10, 13, 14, 20, 23, 31, 32, 33, 
53, 74, 78, 83, 105, 107, 111, 112, 117, 119, 120, 123, 126, 
127. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS AND METHODS 

A YOUNG girl from a home of wealth and culture was 
eager to help iu a club of girls from a factory. She 
said anxiously to the worker in charge, "What can I 
talk about to them?" 

"What do you and your friends talk about when you 
are together?" 

Honesty and humor combined in the reply, given 
with a dimpling smile, ''Beaux and clo'es!" 

Here are desire for approval and admiration, ro- 
mance, beauty, ambition to do something in the world 
and to have that service recognized by those who have 
already "arrived." Truly, these are universal roots. 

The Girl's Problem, and the Educator's. From the 
girl's side, the problem of her education is the indi- 
vidual one of learning how to do the things she wants 
to do; of getting the information that is needed in 
her projects; of finding out the principles of human 
action on which she may count in "managing" other 
people in accomplishing things she cannot do alone ; of 
observation, imitation, "trial and error" in behavior 
which shall secure the approval for which she longs. 
She may be very unselfish and altruistic in her ultimate 
purposes, but learning to do the necessary things is 
an affair concerning herself and the older or more ex- 
perienced persons who can teach her. 

From the educator's side, the problem is both social 
and individual. There is the general ideal of "race 

212 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 213 

progress/' of conserving through these young lives all 
that has been found worth while in civilization and 
human character ; and there is also the desire that each 
particular girl shall be able to contribute her own 
gift of personality. There is only one hope of success 
for the educator.^ Every educator, be she in no more 
ofi&cial position than the volunteer leader of a good- 
times club, will be effective just in so far as she is a 
"good teacher.'^ In its simplest analysis, "being a 
good teacher" means merely that she sees the girl's 
own problem and works with her to solve it, rather 
than attempting to hand over to her, or impress upon 
her from above and beyond her, ready-made solutions 
of problems that she will see only when she is as old 
as the educator. 

Teaching Material. The means at the disposal of 
those who guide the girl in this vital adventure, to be, 
to get, and to do, are the forces within the girl, the 
human relationships of her life, and the general social 
and material environment. The inner forces are the 
instincts, interests, knowledges, and habits — old, new, 
and just arising ; and these with the laws of their inter- 
action must be understood. The relationships which 
are most formative are those that are chosen by herself, 
but the right persons from whom to choose them must 
be provided for her acquaintance. The general environ- 
ment of almost any girl in the United States furnishes 
raw material enough to develop an abundant life, if 
selection is wisely made from its possibilities; the 
wiser, more experienced person can help the girl form 

1 Let the reader remember that the term "educator" is used throughout this 
book as an inclusive designation for any relatively mature individual — father, 
mother, teacher, club leader, or older friend — who has some definite responsibility 
for so directing the experiences of the girl that her behavior will be different from 
what it would be without that direction. 



214 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

and test principles of such selection, and help her to 
find the elements that are hidden to her inexperience. 
Instinct teaches the butterfly how to emerge from its 
chrysalis, but human instincts have to be socially 
guided in the intricate social life which they have 
developed. Yet even in human life there are things 
which cannot be done for another without fatal results 
to that other. If the girl is to emerge from her chrys- 
alis whole and radiant, she may be furnished the ma- 
terials she needs, but she must ultimately do the work 
herself. 

The problems in which girls may receive help from 
their older friends arise in the concrete situations of 
daily living, in school and home, at work, in recreation 
and social life, in their friendships and romances, and 
in ambitions for future achievement and service. Most 
actual problems involve more than one of these relation- 
ships, but this rough classification may serve as a guide 
in discussion. While in our progressive acquaintance 
with a girl we usually arrive at her own formulation 
of her ideals and motives last of all, yet unless we have 
a fairly clear insight into these hidden springs of con- 
duct we shall fail either to understand her acts or to 
give worthy help. What are the 

". . . . instincts immature. 
All purposes unsure. 
That weighed not as his work, 

Yet swelled the man's amount; 
Thoughts, hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act. 

Fancies that broke through language and escaped"? 

Problems of Ambition. On the stage of her inner 
consciousness the girl's own self has always the spot- 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 215 

light. That self may be very different from the one 
observed by a prosaic world, and different from the 
self that now is, as she would herself admit. It is the 
future, the ''possible self," that youth must always 
see, and one who would do creative work with this 
palpitating life-stuff must see it too. 

"All I could never be, 
All, men ignored in me. 
This I was worth to God. ..." 

Very crude and tawdry in its actual outlines may be 
this figure of her inner vision ; or its grace and radiance 
may be in pitiful contrast to the possibilities of the 
exterior; but the realizing of this outline is the all- 
inclusive task of living. It must be with sympathy 
and understanding that the "relatively mature indi- 
vidual" who attempts to take a part in this drama 
plays her subordinate role. 

1. Beauty. First of all, the heroine must be dressed 
to fit the part! To secure attention, one must be 
beautiful if possible, or at least ''interesting" enough 
to be popular. This love of beauty and love of admira- 
tion in simple compound often produce personal vanity 
and absorption in "style."^ 

2 Txirn to the "Answers to Correspondents" column on the fashion page of any 
popular Sunday paper. You can easily duplicate these samples which were 
chosen almost at random from five columns of similar letters and the answers to 
them: 

Patty 

I am an interested reader of your page in the Sunday Journal. I am 5 feet 7 
inches tall, weight 130 povmds, 15 years old, waist 26 inches, hips 37 inches, bust 
34 inches, wear No. 5 shoe. I have dark brown hair; it is thick but not long, and 
very oily. Could you teU me of something that would take the oil out? I have 
dark brown eyes, black eyebrows and lashes, a very dark complexion and lots of 
color in my cheeks. I have blackheads in my face. Will you tell me of some 
remedy? I wear my hair parted on the side and in three coils in the back. Is that 
style becoming to me? What are my becoming colors? Am I homely? 

— Patty. 
For Thin Eyebrows 

My measurements are: Bust 36 inches, waist 26 inches, hips 35 inches; I am 5 
feet 4 inches tall. How are my proportions? I weigh 122 pounds; I wear size 



216 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEAOTER 

"A girl has simply got to dress stylish or she won't 
get any invitations" is the conviction of every girl eager 
for the tribute of parties and partners. "Beaux and 
clo'es" are inseparable. How are the love of beauty and 
the meager wage allowance to be adjusted? Never 
by frowning on "extravagance" ! and, moreover, ex- 
tremes of dressing and bad taste are by no means con- 
fined to girls with limited means. Two measures will 
be found almost invariably successful : one is the study 
of beauty and good taste as an art, discovering the laws 
of proportion and suitability on which being "well 
dressed" depends; the other is the pronouncement of 
an undisputed fashion authority. "You may alter that 
skirt after you take it home if you will," said the 
teacher of a settlement dress-making class to the over- 
grown girl of fifteen, whose preference was for the 
models in the cheap shops in the neighborhood, "but 
it shall not leave my hands in had style" The girl 
knew that the teacher designed for a "swell" modiste, 
and she did not change the modest length. In similar 
fashion frizzes and paint disappeared from the toilette 
of a group of cash girls after the influence of a day 
at the country home of an unassuming and girlish 
"millionairess" had taught them to discriminate the 



634 glove and 4 or 43^ shoe. My hair is like enclosed sample; what color is it? 
My eyes are sometimes green and sometimes brown, I have dark eyelashes and 
eyebrows, my eyebrows are very thin. What can I do for them? My teeth are 
even and white. To what type do I belong? What colors can I wear? I am 
14 years old. Is that too young to go to shows and basketball games with boys? 
If a man thanks a girl for a dance, what should she say? — Jack G. 

Brown Eyes 

I read your department often and like it very much. I am 15 years old, a sopho- 
more in high school, 5 feet 2 inches tall, weight 102 pounds, waist 25 inches, hips 
35 inches, bust 34 inches. How are my proportions? Am I too short? I weai a 
23^ shoe, 5K glove; have an oval face, a white complexion, red Ups, brown eyes 
and brown ciirly hair. Would you consider me good looking? What colors can 
I wear? Could I wear separate skirts and waists? How long should I wear 
my skirts? —Brown Eyes. 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 217 

"real ladj" from the flashy customers whose exteriors 
they had been copying. 

There is no harm in letting the young girl under- 
stand that one reason people prefer to see her simply 
dressed is because the charm of her fresh young skin 
and sparkling eyes thus shows to better advantage; 
that older women wear more elaborate ornaments 
because they need to ! A young woman who could have 
reasonably afforded all the white satin and tulle of the 
wildest dreams of the girls in the factory where she 
led a noon-day club, said quite simply to them one day : 
'^My wedding dress is going to be of sheer white muslin 
that will launder. Then I can wear it to parties in 
the country where we shall be this summer, and enjoy 
it more than just once. And I'd rather have the money 
to spend on my kitchen furnishings." "I think it is 
sloppy to wear a thing that spots and frays, first time,'^ 
said the social leader in a boarding school to the "new- 
rich" arrival. The bluntness hurt, but it was more 
effective than the pronouncement of the "teachers' in- 
spection." 

2. Power. Not only beauty but power is character- 
istic of this self of her inner vision. As the instinctive 
interest in men and boys combines with instinctive 
delight in exercising new-found powers, varying combi- 
nations with other factors produce the thoughtless, the 
reckless, or the calculating flirt. Any young girl is 
flattered by the attention of "grown men, not kids," 
but any chance to bend a male creature to her will or 
whim is welcome. Safeguarding from harmful results 
of this play must come from larger interests and unself- 
ish ideals. Unless a girl is abnormally hardened and 
cynical, she is amenable to appeal to use this same 



218 GIRLHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

power for a higher purpose. Her romantic imagination 
will respond to the stories of women whose influence 
has made and unmade men and nations. Perhaps there 
is nowhere in literature a more thrilling contrast than 
is possible in the vividly retold stories of Deborah and 
Barak, of Samson and Delilah. What if Delilah had 
been a Deborah? If the girl has the power to twist a 
big, soft-hearted man around her little finger, all she 
cares for is a chance to prove it. It is more "interest- 
ing" to use this power for the good of the world than 
for ^^stunts" with no point to them. And she can 
realize the unenviable responsibility if her whims 
chance to spoil the possibilities of the man. 

Parallel with the desire to demonstrate her power 
by ruling men is the craving for popularity and leader- 
ship with her girl companions. The proportion of the 
two impulses varies in different girls, and in occasional 
individuals one or the other may seem to be lacking. 
Their manifestations may vary in strength as well as 
in proportion. Extreme self-distrust may even give 
the impression that neither is present, but usually the 
repressed and timid girl's longing for power is pathetic. 
No more effective means of developing her latent 
abilities can be devised than to give her a chance to 
organize and carry through some piece of work, and 
to have her efficiency recognized by herself and others. 
The girl who naturally takes the lead in any group 
which includes her, needs to have circumstances so 
arranged that she shall see clearly the difference be- 
tween leadership and domineering, and between "execu- 
tive ability" and "bossiness." Indeed, the common 
sense of the girls of any group may generally be relied 
on to rectify unfairness in honors and popularity; but 



PEOBLEMS AND METHODS 219 

occasionally there is too much ability in the group to 
be brought out by the activities they have devised. 
Then the girl who has been already "discovered" is the 
only one who gets the practice needed. Sometimes the 
part of the older person may be to help a girl use the 
humiliation which comes to her through the blunt 
decisions of her group, to overcome her faults instead 
of becoming embittered and disagreeable. 

3. Friendship. We have noted the fact that a most 
ordinary woman, or another girl near her own age, may 
possess a sufficient minimum of ideal qualities so that 
a vivid imagination may supply the rest. The more 
respects in which this woman fails to possess the real 
qualities attributed, the greater is the danger that she 
may accept the homage called forth by the ideal she 
so remotely resembles. Some of the more acute prob- 
lems of this age arise in connection with this relation- 
ship. Sex life in the girl is still relatively undiffer- 
entiated, and in the indiscriminateness of this period 
there is danger that emotions will make the wrong 
connections. The affection and understanding of the 
older woman call forth warm gratitude. The girl now 
has the potentiality of sex-love, and while she does 
not know what it is, she feels that it is the best that 
she has, and so she gives it to the adoree. This is the 
essence of the "crush." When the recipient is so "defi- 
cient in intellect or in character" as to take the affec- 
tion selfishly, the girl is robbed of that which is not 
hers to give. But if the adoree is wise and unselfish, 
she has the opportunity of opportunities to utilize this 
passing phase to help the girl into right mental and 
emotional habits. In this oppressively brief period of 
her fluidity, the model that the girl finds largely deter- 



220 GIELHOOD AXD CHAEACTER 

mines whether she shall emerge into matnrdty having 
childhood's partial personalitv. with sex ignored and 
suppressed: having a self-conscious sex with a rudi- 
mentary personality attached; or as a woman with 
unified character and power. 

When this devotion is for a girl near her own age, 
the recipient sometimes encourages it for her own 
advantage. She flatters the younger girl and tises her 
as a willing "fag." or as a foil in a little three-cornered 
drama, or as a round on the social ladder — and having 
finished using her. discards her. The emotions which 
follow such an experience are very intense, and tend 
to color every idea associated with the word "friend/' 
till in the cynical rebound the victim may reach this 
generalization : "Everybody is after what can be gotten 
out of everybody else. If everybody is for himself, I 
will look out for myseK.'' Thus "self" is acknowledged 
as the supreme value, the center of the world. Such 
tragedies call for delicacy and wisdom on the part of 
an older friend. Very rarely is the matter to be spoken 
of directly. The girl who is fine enough to suffer will 
have a sense of loyalty to her demolished ideal that will 
shield the oft'ender. or her own hurt aft'ection will crave 
silence. Often the best possible course is to introduce 
the "disillusioned"' girl to some who are known to be 
the right sort, and to make a deepening acquaintance 
natural and all but inevitable. A wisely appointed 
committee in Stmday school class or school society, or 
an assignment of the right jDair for library research 
or laboratory experiment i possibly with a hint to the 
one chosen for this assistance that she must not mind 
a snub or two) will often work wonders. 

Problems of School Life: 1. The ''Crush.'' Under condi- 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 221 

tions which too strictly segregate girls from normal 
companionship with boys, there sometimes arises an 
exclusive form of friendship to which the name of 
^^crush" is also given. Two sets of tendrils, finding 
no good rough brush, have interlocked. Often there is 
nothing of the sex-response in this exclusiveness, but 
the submissive one has found a dominant personality 
to cling to, and the dominator monopolizes her. Some- 
times the girl is one whose mental interest has de- 
veloped faster than her physical or emotional life. If 
romance has stirred, it has not been connected with 
herself or any of the slower maturing boys she knows, 
who are, to her, inferior, uninteresting creatures. It 
takes a girl who has traveled, or who writes brilliant 
themes, or who leads in the adventurous escapades of 
boarding-school life, to stir her imagination. The 
ensuing relations are frequently amusing, and usually 
cure themselves of excess as soon as other proper 
interests are supplied. If either or both of the couple 
affected are far out of the average, a rather disgusting 
infatuation may occur, which may need special meas- 
ures,^ but the best general method is to keep the tone 
of the school so free from sentimentality that such 
attachments languish. An effective leverage is the 
girFs own conscious responsibility for growth, for mak- 
ing herself know many people whether she likes to or 
not ; and another powerful force is her sense of respon- 
sibility for the lonely girls in the school. 

2. Homesickness. There is another emotional storm 
which is a brief but very real danger affecting the 
placing of many a girl where she may discover herself. 
The girl who goes away to school often has an attack 

* See the author's "Special Problems with Girls" (in preparation). 



222 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of homesickness which tests the steadfastness of her 
purpose. If she has the mentality to be benefited by 
the school life, she may be somewhat relieved by being 
helped to understand just what homesickness really is. 
It is the discomfort of the whole organism and of every 
sensori-motor connection in it, because of changed sur- 
roundings. There are a different number of steps re- 
quired in going from her room to the dining-room ; the 
stairs call for a different muscular adjustment; the 
doorknobs are placed at a different height; the sounds 
and sights all register on unaccustomed portions of her 
sense organs; and at the same time all the familiar 
connections are literally aching to be used. There is 
as great a difference in the idea connections. The 
strange voices convey equally strange meanings; the 
strange faces show no familiar expressions of under- 
standing her allusions or her unspoken purposes ; every- 
thing has to be explained to everybody. 

If she can throw herself voluntarily into the speedy 
acquisition of the needed new habits and become in- 
terested in the new sensations; if she can think of 
the fact that these new persons are many of them 
having the same experience and need her help, her dis- 
comfort will be lessened and its duration shortened. 
This may seem a small thing, but one who has ever 
attended a boarding school is ready to marvel at an- 
other evidence of Aristotle's astuteness in his hypoth- 
esis that the brain is a gland for the secretion of 
tears. 

3. Exelusiveness. Another problem of school life con- 
cerns its organizations — literary societies, clubs, sorori- 
ties, or whatever they may be called. In careful studies 
made from the educators' standpoint, the verdict is 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 223 

pretty generally against the secret society for very 
young people.* Some who are strong sorority women 
in college do not wish their younger sisters to belong 
to the high-school sororities in which they were them- 
selves active. "There is another nice little girl going 
to be spoiled," said a thoughtful high-school senior as 
she watched a fourteen-year-old freshman respond to 
the "rushing." 

This is a special phase of a problem that everyone 
meets throughout life. There are always persons in 
one's immediate environment that "you can respect 
and be nice to, but you simply can't like," while others 
stimulate in us the "consciousness of kind." They are 
"our sort," and we like to be with them. The vividness 
of emotion at this period in the girl's life is particularly 
strong in her liking and disliking of persons. Lines 
of social cleavage widen readily, and the larger group 
is split into little self-centered fragments, mildly indif- 
ferent or jealously hostile. The same phenomenon 
occurs in work rooms, or stores, or factory floors. One 
subdivided part of an industry, or the handling of one 
kind of goods or tools, gives to its workers a social 
superiority — often for no reason other than that such 
superiority has been assumed by a personality who 
could impress the others, like the nucleus of the "best" 
sorority. 

The girl's social attitude must be decided by the 
ideal around which she is organizing her life. If she 
is self- centered, she will use all the arts at her com- 
mand to be "taken up" by the set which promises the 
most advantages to herself, and she will scheme to 

■*A large number of articles were published in various magazines during the 
years 1904-1911. See topic "High School Fraternities," in the Readers' Guide 
in any library, for detailed references. 



224 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

become its leader. If her life revolves about that of 
her chum, or of some boy, they will dictate which set 
she joins. In either case her only "problem" is that 
of getting what she wants. Her choice is an automatic 
result of her limited experience and her interpretation 
of surface details. It is the girl who honestly wants 
to be unselfish or socially efficient who is puzzled. The 
appeal of the "exclusive" society is in its sharply de- 
fined ideal, which it seeks not so much to produce in 
its members as to maintain in them. It chooses from 
those who already have the social habits of cultured 
home training, or the externals which money can 
supply. Oftentimes the snobbery with which the 
teacher struggles is not the girl's but her mother's. 
But the girl also feels the challenge of democracy and 
opportunity. "It takes only a narrow mind and a 
selfish heart to be ^exclusive,' while it takes the 'grace 
of the Lord Jesus Christ' in the heart to be inclusive," 
said a magnetic leader of young women. Future ability 
to meet or to lead or to help people depends on knowing 
how they think and how they live. "Nothing that is 
human is alien to me" meets a response in the young 
girl's soul. The more kinds of people she understands, 
the fewer the limitations of her power. Now is the 
time to begin the wide acquaintance. It is stupid to let 
fine houses or clothes make a barrier between any two 
persons who have the same tastes and interests; it is 
both stupid and cruel to let a girl suffer loneliness and 
ridicule because no one takes the trouble to know her. 
Unless a girl is bigger than her set, it will monopolize 
her time and limit her growth. She must grow and 
work with groups, but she need not be bound by one 
group. 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 225 

Problems of Romance: 1. Marriage. The average girl 
of sixteen is romantic, but consciously unfinished. At 
one end of the range of variation from this median is 
the girl under-developed emotionally and perhaps over- 
developed intellectually. At the other extreme is the 
passionate, sensuous creature who is perhaps already 
matured irrevocably, or the sweetly docile, colorless 
nonentity who has reached the limit of her development 
in every way, physical, emotional, and mental. If the 
latter is not mentally subnormal, she may make for 
some man who desires nothing further from his wife, 
a useful and fairly pleasant little housekeeper and 
nurse. The willful girl, whose physical instincts are 
so strong that they overbalance her whole personality, 
may perhaps through the further stimulus of mother- 
hood develop into a real woman with a character. If 
a girl of sixteen or seventeen is determined to marry at 
once, perhaps the only effective deterrent is to show 
her that marriage requires maturity, and if she is cer- 
tain that there is no more possibility of growth in her, 
she is probably as ready as she ever can be. A dis- 
passionate statement of her case in this generalized 
fashion stands more chance of securing a reconsider- 
ation of romantic and hasty plans than agonized 
appeals for deference to the wishes of the families con- 
cerned. 

2. Disillusionment. A perfectly normal and inno- 
cent girl, filled with the foolish and unreal sentiment 
of a certain type of fiction, or dreaming in the seclusion 
of a boarding school, may do silly and impulsive things. 
At this age of little secret symbols and tender nothings 
in any of her affections, she wears next her heart the 
latest scrawl from ''Charley," and hides in her holy of 



226 GIELHOOD AND CHAKACTER 

holies the latest photograph of his callow features. 
That her own picture is judicially classified by 
Charley's friends as a "peach" or a "lemon/' and per- 
haps "swapped" for a more desired specimen for his 
collection, is beyond her belief. Disillusionment is 
necessary and wholesome, but painful, and one of the 
most difficult things to accomplish. A brother or a 
rival may convince her of the facts, but it needs a 
person with real sympathy to restore the hurt self- 
respect, and to make clear the dividing line between 
permissible confidence and indiscreet sentimentality. 
But at this age, when nothing wounds so cruelly as 
ridicule, parents and friends need to see that she is 
protected from ignorantly subjecting to possible ridi- 
cule the things which are real and sacred. 

There is no surer road to the wholesome disillusion- 
ing of one form of this sentimentality than that taken 
by the principal of a certain young ladies' seminary. 
Her watchful eye had noted the symptoms of romantic 
infatuation with riding masters and grooms, so one day 
she proceeded to address the girls somewhat after this 
manner : "Xow, young ladies, there is no reason in the 
world why any of you should not marry her coachman. 
He is young, handsome, brave, and probably the moral 
superior of many of the young men in your own circle. 
But remember that you have been brought up to daily 
tubbing and showers. He has had a scrubbing in warm 
water on Saturday nights and washed his face and 
hands whenever appearances indicated the necessity. 
That is really sufficient for cleanliness as he views it, 
but he will not feel things of which you are acutely 
conscious." Someway, the romance of elopement faded ! 

Problems of the Physical Basis of Emotion: 1. Mental 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 227 

Attitude. Yet with the most worthy intent, one should 
not needlessly arouse disgust. From whatever causes, 
of differences in nervous organism or previous training, 
the attitude of nice girls toward physical life tends to 
vary toward two extremes : one which is frankly inter- 
ested, and finds no necessary knowledge or contact un- 
pleasant ; the other which would of its own choice never 
attend to the thought of physiological processes, and to 
which any contact with the human body is distasteful. 
It is, of course, necessary to remember that "there are 
no types," and the most squeamish may be surprisingly 
obtuse in some particular, while the girl with the most 
scientific curiosity may have some instinctive repulsion 
to a situation which is commonly acceptable or indif- 
ferent. The hypersensitive creature may need to learn 
to control her nausea reflexes, and the biology enthu- 
siast may need to remember that verbal associations 
sometimes cause vividly unpleasant experiences in 
others. The golden mean is a respect for the body that 
prevents careless familiarity and undignified dishabille, 
but that is prevented from no service by inability to 
control instinctive reflexes. 

2. Caresses. The physical side of all intimacies is a 
tremendously important thing. Do you not know the 
person whose brilliant conversation you scarcely hear 
for fear he will catch you wondering which eye is the 
one that is looking at you ? And the girl whose friend- 
ship you could value more highly only if she were cured 
of her fetid breath? It takes genius to atone for un- 
tidiness of dress. In her thought of marriage, the girl 
is not indelicate, but honest, who takes into her picture 
of the future the body as well as the soul of her other, 
inescapable self. A prim and undemonstrative young 



228 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

girl, with the pink mounting under her fair skin and 
earnestness in her blue eyes, said to an older girl who 
was discussing the proprieties: ''But if you don't let 
him kiss you before you are engaged, how are you 
going to find out whether you want him to?" This 
question of tentative caresses is an important one. 
There are probably some girls whose attractions and 
repulsions to certain persons at first sight are due to 
an unrecognized imagery of contact. It is probable 
that others, without this vivid tactile imagery, may 
be startled at the reflexes of aversion which arise when 
the right to caress has been irrevocably given. 

Society has quite generally recognized this problem, 
and has provided various answers. Some have held 
that young people might make these experimental con- 
tacts, provided it were done in the presence of respon- 
sible persons, and under due regulations. Others from 
an opposite viewpoint have considered any sort of 
caress, and the affectionate impulses which prompt it, 
to be "temptations of the flesh," sternly to be denied. 
This is the attitude of asceticism. It is found among 
every people in every period of history, and has affected 
the development of some branches of every great reli- 
gion. The adolescent must work out her own problems 
of the clash between impulse and conventionality, be- 
tween instinct and instruction, but the state of society 
which she finds is the result of a long historic develop- 
ment. It will be helpful if her older friends can give 
her something of that historic perspective. 

"Morality" and ''righteousness" in their root mean- 
ings have developed from the adjustment of individual 
desire to social welfare. Always there have been indi- 
viduals who "let themselves go" in following impulses 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 229 

which brought pleasure, no matter how temporary that 
pleasure might be. Upon such individuals society has 
always for its own preservation had to exercise re- 
straint of some sort, by means of laws, or customs, or 
social disapproval and religious anathema. There have 
also always been individuals who exercised strong self- 
restraint, or, in psychological terms, whose "inhibitions 
overbalanced their impulses." The real causes for the 
strength of this inhibitive power have not always been 
those which they consciously and sincerely described as 
their motives. One person may feel his helplessness 
under the sway of his own impulses if once they should 
get the start of him, and believe them to be always 
uncontrollable in all persons. Unfortunate experiences 
may have mingled innocent pleasure and moral un- 
cleanness in his thought so that they never can be 
disentangled. Or one may never have been trained 
to control and direct his emotional impulses and so 
feel it necessary to suppress all those which are not 
harmless when unrestrained. Quite another kind of 
individual has a nervous make-up which makes it diflS- 
cult to resume an interrupted train of ideas; or a 
naturally narrow field of conscious perception, which 
practice has never widened. To remove all distractions 
from his contemplation of that which he conceives as 
the highest good, he either tries to reform society from 
much of its normal activity, or he holds himself aloof 
from society severely, condemning everything that does 
not conform to his own standards. 

Sometimes well-meaning people who are unable to 
discriminate between forces and the direction in which 
they are applied, seek to prevent excess by prohibiting 
everything which has been associated with that excess. 



230 GIKLHOOD AND CHAKACTER 

The stern and undemonstrative family life of some of 
our finest early citizens was due to the conviction that 
because soft caresses accompanied lustful indulgence, 
affectionate caresses would inevitably excite lustful 
desire. Because innocent young people are attracted 
to the vulgar and degrading burlesque by the sense 
appeal of color, of light flashing from jets and spangles, 
and by the peculiarly stimulating sound of strongly 
accented rhythm, some earnest people feel that color, 
light, and rhythmic music are themselves dangerous or 
degrading. But light and color, music and bodily 
rhythm are the natural expression of youth. The dif- 
ference is in the life they are made to express. 

So in the matter of experimental caresses, the dance 
has been for much of the world one of society's duly 
regulated and approved methods of experimentation. 
AVhen Puritan asceticism conscientiously ascribed 
dancing as the cause of lax morals among young people, 
it became anathema in much of the best life of the New 
World. But youth is childishly literal, and when the 
reasoned basis of the pronouncement no longer held 
the attention of new generations, custom still banned 
the "worldly" dance, but its deeper purpose was often 
carried out in a far less restrained manner by means of 
"kissing games." 

3. Dancing. The arguments for and against dancing, 
and special forms thereof, are interminable. We may 
come to a practical conclusion by remembering that 
regulating actions from without will never regulate the 
character. Self-regulated activities proceed from the 
motives which form the character. The moral educa- 
tion of the emotions begins not with prescribing or 
proscribing the acts of impulsive young people, but in 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 231 

"self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control." The only 
safety for boy or girl is in their understanding the 
cause, and the racial and social purpose, of the emo- 
tions which they experience and which they arouse, 
and in their accepting their new powers as a trust for 
the future they are to create. Selfish recklessness, 
ribaldry, and sentimental gush alike retire before the 
dignity of that understanding which is the right of 
every youth and maiden. 

But this goal lays out a program for the educator 
which is vastly harder than mere prohibition of both 
dancing and "spooning." Prohibition accomplishes 
only negative results, and does not always do that. 
Moreover, to a large proportion of the women who have 
some part of the responsibility for the moral and reli- 
gious development of the girl, authority in this matter 
is not given. The girls in the club or Camp Fire group, 
in the school or college class, go to dances with the 
permission or approval of the home. How is the one 
who cares for their spiritual growth and social safety 
to be of the most help? Only by the path of pains- 
taking and genuine affection which sees to it that each 
boy and girl has the right knowledge and the right 
attitude. It is entirely possible to help the clean- 
minded girl to understand the laws of expression in 
posture so she may never even unconsciously arouse 
responses for which she has no desire. And it is pos- 
sible for the right person to help the careless girl not 
only to understand what forces she is playing with, 
but also to care enough to use them rightly. No woman 
can be the right person to do this who is merely dis- 
gusted or annoyed, and does not herself care honestly 
and affectionately for that girl. It is only when some 



232 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

one cares enougli for each boy and girl to know that 
each understands and reverences the body and its in- 
stincts, that these instincts for rhythm and for bodily 
movements of admirable grace and power, and the 
deeper impulse for affectionate touch may be relieved 
from the burden of evil associations with which social 
history has wrongly loaded them. 

Yet the educator and the boys and girls must remem- 
ber that, after all, sensations are not ideas. The differ- 
ence between the sensuous and the aesthetic is in linking 
with pleasant sensations a conscious expression of 
ideas of grace, freedom, beauty, and joy. The purpose 
of social gatherings should be mutual pleasure and 
mutual acquaintance. A group of girls in a large uni- 
versity recently included in their written statement of 
the social needs of the students, "Some way for girls 
and men to meet, other than in the big 'formal' dances," 
and explained further that "Many of the nicest of the 
men and girls either don't care for dancing, or feel 
awkward, or have scruples. So they are left out; and 
the rest have no chance to get really acquainted." The 
very democracy of youth demands forms of social life 
from which no one shall be debarred by awkwardness 
or defect of body, and which shall enrich the life of all 
with the wit and charm of the gifted. It is not too 
much to expect that the young people who are capable 
of willing right uses of their lives may use in social 
inventiveness some of the energy now expended in 
coping with unsympathetic or unexplained prohibi- 
tions, or in rebelling at a prudery whose falseness they 
have rather felt than understood. Active, emotional 
youth must find part of its comradeship in sharing both 
movement and emotion. But the deeper comradeship 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 233 

involves intellectual as well as emotional experiences. 
It is those who think most deeply together who are 
capable of having the most "fun with their minds," and 
it is this clever sort of fun which must be linked with 
the rhythmic and the formal to give any amusement 
a permanent zest. To realize this, and then to help 
solve the problems involved in a fuller social life, is 
the privilege of the older friends of youth. 

SUMMAKY 

The social and educational problems connected with 
the girl in this decisive period can be met successfully 
only as they are recognized as her problems and ap- 
proached from her point of view. Their number and 
variety are literally infinite, and only a few of the 
most common and representative have here been cited. 
They all have ultimately to do with her discovery of 
their relation to fundamental principles which can be 
used to solve further problems. The experiences of 
home and school, friendships and ambition, romance 
and amusement are the material from which the grow- 
ing personality is to achieve her own moral freedom 
for intelligent adjustments, judgments, choices, and 
decisions. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 21, 23, 32, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 
51, 58, (59), 65, 80, 82, 91, 95, 96, 105, 111, 133, 134, 
137, 138, 142, 146, 147, 150. 



CHAPTER XIV 

EDUCATION FOR CHARACTER: THE PROBLEM OP 
WHOLENESS 

^ The outstanding characteristic of the young girl is 
joy in life. Laughter is an instinctive expression of 
this satisfying well-being, and the italics and exclama- 
tion points of her conversation are an index of her 
excess energy. Pleasure-giving and pleasure-loving are 
so typical of this age that nothing is more baffling 
than the young girl who is indifferent or passive. The 
psychologist who dispassionately affirms that it is 
^'characteristic of the adolescent female for the energy 
of all sensory stimuli to drain off in the specialized 
motor discharge of vocal and respiratory centers/' prob- 
ably does not the less enjoy the giggling and chattering 
of a group of impulsive and effusive young girls. But 
his long words probably do indicate the seriousness 
with which he regards the danger of indiscriminateness, 
which lurks in this effusiveness. If her words are an 
index, the young girl "adores" with equal fervor a deed 
of heroism and a new hat, and she espouses with equal 
enthusiasm roller skating or the support of a famine 
orphan. She is too excited by the vividness of present 
experiences to have any adequate sense of proportion 
and value, other than the habitual standards brought 
from childhood, and these must leave many new factors 
unprovided for. 

Individual and Social ''Salvation." We are all ac- 
quainted with grown women who are emotionally 

234 



THE PROBLEM OF WHOLENESS 235 

devout, are indefatigable church workers, and are sin- 
cere in their purpose to be good Christian women, who 
yet see no inconsistency in deceiving their men-folk 
in order to get what they want, in their "catty" pettish- 
ness to their women "friends," or in their callous in- 
difference to the child-labor and sweatshop conditions 
which have produced their beloved bargains. They fail 
to keep promises, after the conditions under which 
the promise was made have altered. That it is "incon- 
venient" seems to them, not an excuse, but a sufficient 
reason, for disregarding a contract. We are in no 
position to blink the moral inadequacy of many other- 
wise good women ; neither will it help matters to ignore 
or excuse the facts, or to recriminate that "men are 
just as bad." It is gravely tp be acknowledged that 
our social, industrial, and military evils show that men 
have failed as seriously as women in achieving whole- 
ness of life. In both cases we should spend no time in 
bitterness or regret, but search for the causes. These 
causes are to be found in vital defects in the education 
of boys and girls. These defects differ, in that most 
boys have attained a certain personal decency of truth- 
fulness, self-control, and reliability independent of 
moods, which many women lack. But the defects can 
be remedied. Religious education need not continue 
to fail to help boys and girls into completeness of moral 
life. 

The "salvation" which the church seeks for the indi- 
vidual is, in Jesus's own words, to "be made whole"; 
and the social process by which it is to be achieved, 
"that they may be perfected into one." This chapter 
is concerned with the forces within and the factors 
without the girl which, while life is taking its shape 



236 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

for permanent growth^ tend toward or away from 
wholeness of character. 

In whicli Direction Is the Girl Now Facing ? The older 
person who has responsibility or privilege in shaping 
the lives of girls during these crucial "middle" years of 
fourteen to seventeen, may find it convenient to divide 
them into two main groups : those whose lives have been 
badly started, who needed '^making over," and those 
who have right ideals and habits, and whose peril is 
that they may be given a different direction through 
new influences and companions. There are probably 
few real girls who could be unequivocally classified. 
The "best" and most lovable girl will at unexpected 
times exhibit traits that seem appalling to her friends, 
and the "worst" and most "incorrigible" has not only 
a basis of innate possibilities of lovableness and worth, 
but some ideals and habits that are worth preserving, 
and which must be used for the starting point. With 
the reiteration that there is no "typical girl," good, bad, 
or indifferent,! we may use the division according to 
the direction of the tendencies of their lives. 

Confirmation or Conversion? The practice of many 
branches of the Christian Church has followed an un- 
defined recognition of the difference between early and 
middle adolescence. We have seen that the essence of 
the earlier religious development is the assertion of the 
self as a separate, responsible individual. The wide 
prevalence of the rite of confirmation at the age of 
twelve to fourteen is due to the spontaneous interest 
of the new individual in affirming a personal choice 



1 There does seem to be almost an exception to tliis rule in the very form of its 
statement. The "indifferent" girl! Who has not at some time almost despaired 
because of her? Because she plainly indicates that there is something within or 
without that needs changing, she may be considered as one of those who have been 
in some way badly started. 



THE PROBLEM OF WHOLENESS 237 

of the ideals and habits that have been taught by the 
church and the religious family. On the other hand, 
those branches of the church which have laid more 
stress on personal "experience" of a more or less emo- 
tional kind, have made their appeal to the intelligence, 
experience, and fervor of the "young people" of the 
middle teens. In these religious fellovi^ships there may 
have been no opportunity for expressing the earlier 
choice or affirmation, and those young people with 
religious background and training are now making 
public a long cherished intention, with the deeper emo- 
tional accompaniment that is now possible. Many 
persons apply to this experience the term "conversion." 
It will simplify the treatment of our problems as reli- 
gious educators if we are perfectly clear in our mutual 
understanding of this word. 

The original meaning of "conversion," both from the 
derivation of the word and from the origin of its use 
in the New Testament and the early church, is a "turn- 
ing about" from one set of religious beliefs and moral 
habits to another. This can be effected only by arous- 
ing new motives of sufficient power to accomplish the 
reversal of a life direction. Jesus said that grown men, 
whether unrighteous or self-righteous, must "be con- 
verted and become as little children" if they were to 
learn the new habits and ideals which he taught as the 
life of the kingdom of God. A conscious acquaintance 
with the personality of Jesus was the motive which 
produced so great a reversal. It might not be analyzed 
or intellectually understood, but to know him was life 
eternal. The great missionary activities of the apostles 
and first generation of Christians were directed toward 
converting adult Jews and pagans. Until there were 



238 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Christian parents and teachers, no children could grow 
up in Christian knowledge and training. While no 
amount of Christian teaching and training can take 
the place of the personal affirmation of the will, it can 
so direct the will that desire will not be divided, but 
will wish only what is accepted as right. 

Personal choice of what is already a habit is not con- 
version in the root meaning of the term. Present Chris- 
tian usage, however, is extending the meaning of the 
word to include all forms of conscious, personal choice 
in religious standards and values, normal to the in- 
structed or uninstructed adolescent. "Affirmation" 
might be a better word for the further experience of the 
Christian youth, but the terminology of common life 
grows by popular use rather than by scientific promul- 
gation. If a child has had adequate religious education, 
the lines of interest are already away from self toward 
the universe, and the highest ideals are so directed that 
in their infinite growth they will converge toward God. 
The new forces of the individual and social awakening 
can bear the youth onward, gradually or with a mighty 
rush, but without the waste of a reversal of direction. 
And the essential of the Christian experience at this 
age, whatever its form, is the new personal relationship 
to the personality of God, possible to the newly de- 
veloped self and its new appreciation of the revelation 
of Jesus Christ. 

It is of the limited meaning of the word that an 
educator with clear vision has said: "Conversion is a 
fact, but that any child under the influence of the 
Christian Church should need to be converted is a 
confession of the failure of the church in its duty in 
education." Yet the radical reconstruction of a per- 



THE PROBLEM OF WHOLENESS 239 

sonality at this time is possible under sufficient stimu- 
lus and direction. That such violent making over 
should be necessary is a tragedy. That it is possible 
is the great hope for the religious educator who finds 
the life badly started. But let it never be forgotten 
that even conversion itself implies an educative process. 
The Difference Between Adult and Adolescent Conver- 
sion. The transformation of persons converted in adult 
years is an undoubted fact.^ The process by which 
this transformation is produced is the substitution of 
one set of ideals and habits for another. Affections, 
instincts, motives which had never been given their 
place in the personality are now, through the stimulus 
of a sufficiently great emotion, given right of way. Fre- 
quently all the instinctive responses which were at the 
root of the habits of the wicked life are now ignored 
and repressed. Everything which had become asso- 
ciated with degraded acts and thoughts must be kept 
out of mind until the new associations are established. 
The personality is indeed a new one; it is made of a 
different part of the original possibilities. But such a 
life can never be a complete life. No factors of the 
personality were meant to be ignored or omitted, 
though in a true scale of values many factors must be 
subordinated to others. True, when certain factors 
are bound by the habits of years to sin and shame, all 
that is possible is this ruthless self-surgery. The risk 
from old habits and associations is too great to incur, 
and life must grow as it may from the uncorrupted 
remnants. This was recognized by Jesus in the words : 
^^If thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off : it is good 
for thee to enter into life maimed, rather than having 

2 See the thrilling narratives in Harold Begbie's Twice Born Men. 



240 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

thy two hands to go into hell, into the unquenchable 
fire."3 

But Jesus declared that his own mission was to 
"make whole," and he said to the man with a withered 
hand, "Stretch forth thy hand," . . . "and his hand 
was restored.'-"* All that is salvable is to be brought 
back into the unity of the life, for its purposes of 
growth and service. In the years we are now consider- 
ing life is still so plastic that the elemental instincts 
need none of them be eliminated. The change is to be 
in the habits of thought and action. Some of the 
elemental instincts that have heretofore mastered are 
now to take their places as servants of the higher ideals 
that have till now been ignored. 

At the age we are considering, to satisfy one's ideal 
means to satisfy the standard held up by some human 
or divine individuality. '^If you care what I do" — is 
the motive for superhuman effort. That some one else 
"cares" supremely is the most effective, if not the only, 
stimulus for the bafflingly "indifferent" girl as well as 
for the "incorrigible." And the most paralyzing con- 
viction that can take possession of a young life is ex- 
pressed in the bitter cry, "No one cares for my soul."^ 
If a young girl hath not felt the love of a friend whom 
she hath seen, how can she believe in the love of a God 
whom she hath not seen? This stimulating, character- 
creating consciousness of a divine purpose for her life, 
and of a divine motive for carrying it out, must come 
by way of human affection. 

The ideal and the affection, both human and divine, 
may be those which have molded her life till now, only 
with the difference due to her larger powers of appre- 

« Mark 9. 43. ■* Mark 3. 5. » Psa. 142. 4. 



THE PROBLEM OP WHOLENESS 241 

elation; the new realization may come suddenly or 
gradually, and the new purpose may grow into clear- 
ness or grip her attention with swift arrest. Then she 
has the normal and necessary personal religious ex- 
perience which belongs to this stage of her development, 
but it is not "conversion," in the narrow sense. Or 
the knowledge of these higher ideals of life may come 
to one whose childhood and young girlhood had known 
only selfishness or worldliness; and the habits the 
ideals involve may have to be formed from the very 
foundation. However swift or gradual this change may 
be, it is a change from one set of ideals and habits 
to a new one, and is therefore truly "conversion." 

The Fundamental Religious Problem Educational. If 
the girl has had to be "converted," the new habits are 
to be established and the old ones broken up or altered 
in no other way than by the laws of exercise and effect.^ 
That which makes it possible for the new "bonds" soon 
to equal and ultimately to exceed the old ones in 
strength is the intensity of the "satisfyingness" and 
"annoyingness" of responses in conduct which do or 
do not accord with the new ideal. The power of these 
incentives to moral conduct is intensified by the vivid- 
ness of experience and emotion characteristic of these 
years. The most intense emotions and ideals are those 
connected with persons, and we have just seen how 
this fact opens to the persons who "care enough" a 
certain means of success. 

Whether the habits that enter into the swiftly 
settling character are built upon those of childhood, or 
are formed anew by an overmastering energy of emotion 
and will, the new personality must be a unifying of 

^ Compare pp. 49ff. 



242 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

habits of thought and action. Religious leaders have 
been too largely content with the assurance that certain 
beliefs and experience entered into the life, and that 
in its visible acts and apparent interests that life 
should be on a higher "spiritual" level. This is indis- 
pensable, but not sufficient. The essence of moral 
character is to unify , about its highest, ideal center, 
everything icMch enters the life. Yet at some time or 
other there is nothing in living that will be found 
harder to do. Unless its importance is realized, when 
it is hard it will not be done. To leave part of the life 
outside the closely banded whole is moral failure of 
most dangerous subtlety, and it is as apt to trip the 
girl with high ideals and good habits as the one who 
has had to begin anew. 

Meeting the Bisintegrating Forces: 1. Contradictory 
and Incomplete Standards. What are some of the dis- 
integrating forces against which the friend and helper 
of girls must be on her guard? With the new impor- 
tance of the social world, the practical measure used 
in valuing the new interests always comes from some 
person or persons. It often happens that different 
individuals are associated with the new interests — 
persons whose scales of values differ greatly. This 
often results in the immature girl's accumulating a 
series of incongruities and inconsistencies which are 
both laughable and serious. The young girl who cries 
over a pathetic story, "sauces" her mother, gives a day 
of hardest work uncomplainingly to a missionary 
bazaar, teases her little brother till both are in a tan- 
trum, goes to church (with her hair in the latest style 
and a safety-pin showing in her belt), feels the most 
exalted religious fervor under the influence of the music 



THE PROBLEM OF WHOLENESS 243 

and the sermon, adores her Sunday-school teacher 
(especially because she is engaged), and cheats in her 
examination next day, is typical enough of the contra- 
dictions in the crude clash of ideals, instincts, and 
habits in the time of ferment just preceding. We 
expect her to "get over it," and to learn the relation 
of love to God and good will to mankind (including her 
family!) and to realize that attractiveness goes deeper 
than the stylishness that merely "hits the high places" 
of the toilette. But these middle years are the time 
when this "scrappiness" of life and of ideals must be 
welded into unity. Growth is not to be completed — 
that were a misfortune indeed — but it is to be given 
direction toward the right kind of unity. 

2. An Inadequate Center of Personalization. It has 
just been pointed out that the most effective means 
for securing this unification is human friendship. Yet 
in this means to the best possible help inheres often a 
grave danger. In admiration and gratitude for a 
stimulating human friendship, many a girl seeks to 
use as the center about which to build her life the 
character and love of that friend. As no human mold 
is large enough for all of her, she must then either 
omit or alternate part of herself. The possibilities of 
danger in her relation to her adoree have been repeat- 
edly indicated. The strength of religious emotion 
makes the danger peculiarly acute in the relation of 
spiritual adviser. The girl who confessed that she was 
"manufacturing religious difficulties" in order to have 
a claim on the time of the busy woman she adored was 
not so completely "gone" that she had lost her sense 
of humor! The woman must make the girl see that 
she is developing her own life; that she must learn how 



244 GTKLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

to judge and decide for herself ; that she must act with- 
out waiting for direction, if need be. The supreme need 
for her is a large enough vision of what a human life 
may be, and a personal relationship wide enough to 
develop every unsuspected possibility. This need is 
supremely met in God as he is revealed in the life of 
Jesus Christ. In her fealty to him as Lord of her life, 
the organization of that life will be about God as the 
center, and can include the whole of her, with room 
to grow indefinitely. 

In one of George Macdonald's novels, a silly little 
miss who is feeling some of the discomfort consequent 
upon her own selfishness whimpers self -pityingly, "I 
don't see what God ever made me for !'' To which the 
well-poised friend replies matter-of-factly : '^Of course 
you don't ! God isn't done making you yet !" And in 
another of his stories,"^ Margaret, the wholesome Scotch 
girl, tells the ambitious and disappointed lady : "If I 
were you, my lady, I would rather be what God chose 
to make me than the most glorious creature I could 
think of. For to have been thought about — born in 
God's thought — and then made by God, is the dearest, 
grandest, most precious thing in all thinking." There 
are few better statements of what has been called the 
"humbly proud'' conception of human personality. 
Once this center of personalization has been chosen, 
there are not fewer problems for either the girl or the 
educator, but they are solvable. 

3. Separating Present From Earlier Experiences. A 
query naturally arises here: What relation has this 
"choosing of God as the center" to the earlier religious 
life of the girl, and to previous affirmations and con- 

7 David Elginbrod, p. 222. 



THE PEOBLEM OF WHOLENESS 245 

firmations of it? One of the first manifestations of 
adolescence, as has been seen again and again, is the 
new consciousness of selfhood, and this self-recognition 
marks a new phase of all the old affectional relations, 
especially to the family and to God. The wider range 
of ideas and meanings that the few extra years have 
given often causes those who had "joined the church" 
during the earlier impulse to self-expression now to 
pass through a different kind of choosing which seems 
much more real and deep than their present memory 
of what took place earlier. In these few intervening 
years the new self has been growing so fast that the 
girl is constantly surprised by facing new parts of her- 
self that she did not know were there. The new in her 
often makes a barrier between her and old relation- 
ships. For instance, she does not know just when she 
felt "too big" for the kiss of greeting from the old 
friend of her father's, but if he does not respect that 
feeling, she is self-conscious and ill-at-ease with her 
old comrade. If he treats the dawning womanliness 
with deference, her fondness for him can grow into a 
real friendship, based upon, but different from, the 
childish relationship. 

She had loved God with all her childish heart, and 
the new self had affirmed its loyalty to that love. She 
needs first to be honest enough to admit the honesty 
of her childish purpose, and respect it. But there is a 
large part of her present self which did not take part 
in her "confirmation" or "joining the church." In 
many cases habits and interests had been started on 
a large enough foundation so that growth has been 
naturally and perfectly developed from them, and no 
"forward step" is necessary. But there are also many 



246 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

cases where a girl feels miserably hypocritical over her 
"profession of being a Christian." It will help her to 
see that the newly grown part of her needs to take the 
oath of allegiance too. Perhaps most often this is a 
personal matter between her and God. If she feels 
a public statement desirable, its form should not dis- 
count the earlier one, for to recognize its reality is a 
part of the process of consciously unifying her life. 
There is good psychology in that prayer in the book 
of the Psalms, "Unite mj heart to fear thy name." 

4. Separating Social From Religious Interests. If the 
church has been content with recording her early affir- 
mation of love and desire as one of a list of "conver- 
sions" or "decisions" and has not provided continuous 
fellowship and enlarging activity, it frequently comes 
to pass that the new impulses have pushed her into a 
social group where these purely instinctive impulses 
have sole sway. As all the notable studies of adoles- 
cent religion have observed,^ the specifically religious 
interest comes in waves, related to other interests but 
alternating with them.' This is the occasion of the 
conflict between the church and ^the world" in com- 
munities where the loyalty of the early adolescent has 
not been expected or sought. The instinctive activities, 
unrelated to the larger life, have set up an opposition 
of part to whole. The overwhelming influence of age- 
equals at the dawn of this period makes her apt to say : 
"I was only a child when I joined the church, and I 
didn't know what I was doing. No, I'm not really a 
Christian" — and perhaps she adds, "and I don't care 
to be." 



8 See Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, pp. 29, 36fE., 202, 205fF. Coe, 
Education in Religion and Morals, pp. 250-255, and The Spiritual Life, by the 

same author. 



THE PEOBLEM OF WHOLENESS 247 

She feels truly that she does not want to leave out 
of her life the new, instinctive pleasures and activities. 
If the choice is put to her as lying between "giving up" 
that side of her life and not being a Christian, she may 
choose the less permanent satisfaction because its 
appeal is so strong and so immediate. She needs to 
see just what has happened, and how incomplete and 
partial is her present ideal. If she sees that to omit 
the finest and strongest things now, or to ignore them 
until "later," is to warp and cramp her life now and 
in all its growth; if she sees that the satisfactory life 
is that which can include all that is desirable because 
it is discriminating enough to exclude the paltry and 
unsatisfying, she will be ready to find and to adopt 
an adequate working plan. 

5. Negative Ideas From a Misunderstood Vocabulary. 
Often times the girl gets a mistaken idea of the thoughts 
of those who would guide and help her because of a 
fact which underlies most misunderstandings. Two 
persons use the same word with such entirely different 
sets of associated ideas as to make it mean diametri- 
cally opposite things. For example, in the religious 
vocabulary of many is the word "surrender," used as a 
description of the act of will which unifies the life 
about God as the center. Those who use this word in 
the present have generally received it as part of their 
inheritance from those who made religion a vital thing 
in their own lives. Hence its associations differ. To 
some it carries the idea of a rebellious soul, fighting 
against God and finally laying down arms. With 
others the thought is that of a self-abnegation like that 
of a lover to his beloved — a giving over to a superior 
being, freely, of life itself. It is a noble and passionate 



248 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

recognition of the sovereignty of God.^ Now, our young 
people have the background, not of the sermons and 
philosophy of the Great Awakening of the eighteenth 
century, but of the history and literature texts of our 
present common schools. So to them the word ''sur- 
render" is associated with defeat, with an unwilling 
result that meant tragedy and despair to the one who 
surrendered. That which kindles the will of the 
modern girl is not a passive "surrender" but an active 
"volunteering." Every appeal to the growing self 
should be to its loyalty. Especially where the child has 
been trained in Christian beliefs and habits, there is 
nothing in the past self to "give up" except its defects, 
and the call comes to follow more positively the good 
that is already chosen. 

The Sunday school lessons of the modern graded 
series are of tremendous worth at this stage of growth, 
because the mind is filled with principles exemplified 
in the lives of "real people." When the need of the 
majority is greatest for an "objectifying point" for 
their new, emotionally romantic imagination, a year 
is spent with the life of Christ. If one has always 
"belonged," the heart thrills with new zeal from a new 
understanding of his purpose. If one has been con- 
sidered by herself or others an "outsider," the com- 
panionable eagerness of Jesus for the friendship of 
human lives is seen to reach out and include her. 

6. Doubts. At this age "doubt" is so easily stirred 
up, and is so violent and lasting, and its results are 
so disintegrating, that one must be ready to cope with 
its various occasions. If a girl has had a wholesome 



9 As one woman explained her concept of the word: "It is the surrender of chivalry, 
not military but feudal; the equivalent of dedication." 



THE PKOBLEM OF WHOLENESS 249 

life, one of her fundamental beliefs is that God is good 
and the world is good; training and experience coin- 
cide, and belief is easy. With the widening social and 
intellectual horizon comes the shuddering realization 
of some ugly sin in the world. Some person whom she 
has taken to be ideal in character has failed her ; busi- 
ness or domestic scandal has touched the name of the 
man or the woman whom the whole community trusted ; 
a chum has proved fickle or told the trusted secret; 
the boy accepted as her blameless knight has proved to 
have an insulting ideal of womanhood. And all her 
faith in God and goodness is overwhelmed in black 
doubt. The important thing for the girl is not to 
^'accept the situation philosophically" — at her age that 
could mean only moral indifference and cynicism — but 
to realize its meaning for her own conduct. Character 
is to be wrought by unifying all the facts, not by ignor- 
ing the uncomfortable ones. The fact of evil means 
that there is much to do, and that she cannot sit idly 
by and dream. The world is yet unfinished, and she 
must be about her Father's business, if his kingdom 
is to come and his will be done on earth. 

Often the sin which so upsets her faith is that of 
perverted relations of body or soul in the fundamental 
affections. But even the perfectly normal and innocent 
facts of sex life may come to her with an emotional 
shock, especially if she has been without guidance to 
see the old in the new, and to temper strangeness with 
familiarity. In many communities and schools the 
information reaches her in such a way as to be also a 
moral shock. Many parents accept the easy philosophy 
that if their boys and girls are ^'kept busy enough they 
will have no time to think of such things." But this 



250 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

phase of life is not an outside thing to think about; 
it is a vital experience of the sensitive self. Acutely 
conscious as never before of the attitude both to herself 
and to everything else of the people about her, the 
first vivid experience or knowledge is stamped with 
the social attitude toward it. If it comes to her as 
unclean, there will be a determined and conscious effort 
to suppress the whole matter. By the laws of associa- 
tion, memory will revive childhood experiences, and 
conversations of growm-ups, not understood at the time 
and only retained because of the "peculiar" attitude 
noticed. Innuendos and salacious suggestions heard 
from time to time will be vigorously rejected from 
conscious attention, and go to join this submerged 
"complex" of associations. 

Now, no area of the mind can be completely and 
permanently submerged. Any area of associations con- 
nected with a primitive instinct or emotion will be 
vigorous and persistent in its efforts to push itself into 
conscious attention. Complexes associated with in- 
stincts so vital and emotions so overwhelming as those 
of mating and motherhood cannot be long suppressed, 
and the girl is horrified to find that her mind reverts 
to the forbidden topics. She recognizes this as a moral 
fight, but without help she will go at it in a way that 
can bring only defeat. She will either yield to what 
she recognizes as wrong, or the whole split-off topic 
will become morbid. Those who help her must under- 
stand the absolute necessity of unifying life in a way 
which includes it all. 

There was a little girl whose homeless life had so far 
been spent among people who were rough and coarse, 
but, like a white flower, she ke^^t her determination to 



THE PKOBLEM OF WHOLENESS 251 

achieve a character that was fine and pure. Her Sun- 
day school teacher was often the only anchor that kept 
her from being borne away and submerged in the filthy 
tide of her surroundings. The sisters' husbands, 
drunken and bestial, had inspired her with a loathing 
for married life. Around this loathing all her crude 
and inadequate knowledge of physical manhood and 
womanhood had gathered and been suppressed. It was 
to a woman employer who remonstrated with her over 
the neglect of simple health precautions that the whole 
pitiful story came out. "I thought the only way to 
keep my mind clean was not to know anything about 
it." Fortunately, the woman had the tenderness and 
the conviction to make the girl see the beauty of the 
great laws which rule all life from least to greatest; 
and to make her see her own responsibility, not for the 
whole sinning world, but for her own healthful and 
beautiful living. If beauty and righteousness were the 
normal thing, she could see to it that her own life 
exemplified that fact to the other girls who so sorely 
needed to know it. The reward came to this woman 
and to the Sunday school teacher in the girl's later 
adolescence, when, "unashamed and unafraid," she 
reciprocated the love of the clean young fellow whose 
acquaintance she had made in her church. 

SUMMARY 

The business of middle adolescence is that of "inte- 
grating the personality." The religious aspect of this 
process is identical with "salvation" in Jesus's use of 
the term. The lives of some girls have been started in 
the right direction, and some have received an impetus 



252 GIRLHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

in the wrong direction. In either case there will be a 
conscious difference in the meanings, ideals, and pur- 
poses possible to the growing self, compared to those 
possible to the same girl in childhood or early adoles- 
cence. It is the place of the religious educator to see 
that unity is wrought between the former and the pres- 
ent selves, as well as between the varied factors of the 
present self. Whatever the degree of unification or 
transformation to be achieved, the only method avail- 
able is that of education : instruction in ideals and 
training in habits which will fit the individual for 
complete living in fellowship with God and fellow men. 
The disintegrating forces for which the educator must 
be on guard are the newness and strangeness of experi- 
ences which tend to make the life a heap instead of a 
unity; the incompleteness of experience which leaves 
vacant spaces in character; the dissipating effect of 
emotional excitement, which must be concentrated into 
definite activity; the separation of perception from 
action, of purposes from performance, of speech from 
other expression; the incompleteness of the personal 
molds chosen ; and doubts of herself, of others, and of 
God. The positive direction of these forces has been 
indicated. Integration of the personality must come 
about through the habits which form the character 
upon its ideals. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 29, 55, 57, 58, 62, 65, 68, 76, 77, 88, 95, 97, 
111, 135, 141, 146, 148, 150. 



CHAPTER XV 

EDUCATION FOR CHARACTER: THE PROBLEM OF 
EXPRESSION 

"I wish/' said a woman who has rare power over 
the aspirations of girls, "that I had dated the pictures 
I've had in my room, when I acquired them, and when 
I put them away. It would form a record of my 
aesthetic and spiritual growth, and help me know what 
would appeal to girls now." Another woman made a 
similar remark in looking over a file of clippings of 
religious verse, collected mostly through her school and 
college years. The friend to whom the remark was 
addressed smiled reminiscently : "I have been surprised, 
myself, to discover that poems which were of real help 
and inspiration in those years seem to my later mind 
to be mere sentiment, sugar and water." 

The Expression of Sentiment. This is the age of 
emotion and sentiment, and the religion of most girls 
will be as full of sentiment as their other interests and 
ajffections. Much of the verse and song that seems to 
older critics hopelessly slender or even banal, is to 
these girls suffused with the glow of feelings which 
supply much that is not in the words. Some which 
seem to sigh for supine inaction^ are to them only the 



1 That much maligned hymn beginning, "Oh to be nothing, nothing!" needs to 
have the circumstances of its origin taken into account. It is said to have been 
written by a nurse in a great English hospital, to express her faith that God could 
use her involuntary inactivity after her back had been broken in carrying a de- 
lirious patient to safety. Many who know nothing of this pathetic fact never- 
theless feel that so great is the impulse to do something, something great, that the 
greatest possible test of devotion would be to be removed from their throbbingly 
active life. 

253 



254 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

expression of their fear lest tlie eagerness and intensity 
of action in their lives shall omit the valnes which they 
feel can come only from contemplation, or shall prove, 
after all, to be nn-Christian self-seeking. Much of the 
content of hymns is ignored in the total emotional effect 
of their tunefulness, or stirring swing, or even the 
associations under which they were learned. But this 
fact is of itself an argument for associating the emo- 
tional stimulus of this period with words and music 
that have intrinsic worth. 

To read in a handbook that ''at this age sentiment 
and emotion are at their height," and then proceed to 
treat all girls alike in this matter, is to ignore the 
fact of individual differences. ''While many adolescents 
suffer from excessive or misdirected sentiment, others 
suffer for want of sentiment. ... To set free the im- 
prisoned emotional powers of such an adolescent is a 
great service to him, for unless these powers are now 
given exercise he is likely to remain through life cold, 
colorless, incapable of the warmth of appreciation in 
which so much of life's wealth consists.''^ Whether 
sentiment needs to be lessened or increased, that a 
given individual may be well balanced, it is in every 
case essential that the right connections be made be- 
tween feeling and action. It is a true instinct that has 
led the church to insist that at this sentimental and 
dreamy stage of life the difference between the child 
of God and the child of the world should be evidenced 
by a difference in observable behavior. A fatal mistake 
has been made whenever that insistence has been upon 
negative rather than positive differences, upon repres- 



■ See Bibliography, Xumber 76, p. 261. The entire section, pp. 258-261, shoiild 
be read in this connection. 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 255 

sion rather than expression. The same mistake is in 
danger of being repeated in a different form, in our 
new zeal for "practical Christianity/' which too often, 
in its application of the call for service, makes it con- 
sist in meeting only physical needs. There must be 
some form of expressive activity which will include the 
ministry of spirit to spirit. 

Adolescent Emotions and the Revival Appeal. Some 
religious bodies have long utilized in their revival 
methods, both from the platform and in "personal 
work," appeals to the special emotions of this age. 
It has been keenly pointed out^ that this religious 
appeal is modeled upon the arts of the wooing lover. 
This method has proceeded upon sound principles in 
so far as it has recognized that the appeal of religion 
is to persons, to value one Person supremely, and has 
counted affection the strongest motive. The danger is 
that in stopping short of the full analogy, life shall be 
subjected to the disintegration of mere emotionalism 
and sentimentality. Wooing is personal. One man 
wins one woman's love and gives his own, and the thrill 
of emotion is ecstatic. But the purpose of human love 
is to found a home in which children can be reared 
and loved and fitted for their place in society. The 
religious appeal which does not include the social, 
active aspect of religion is as incomplete as the love- 
making which does not lead to sharing the intellectual 
interests and active purposes of the two lives. Ac- 
cording to Jesus's testimony, the divine transport, as 
well as the divine credential, was in sharing divine 
activity. "If I do not the works of my Father, believe 
me not." "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 

' E. S. Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, pp. 228£f. 



256 . GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

"My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to 
finish his work." "I know the Father; and I lay down 
my life for the sheep. . . . Therefore doth my Father 
love me, because I lay down my life." 

Revivals as now conducted have often performed in 
a community the same service for its most vital inter- 
ests that a "clean up week" does for its sanitation, or 
a child welfare or tuberculosis exhibition does for other 
special civic responsibilities. Advertising and unusual 
emphasis arouse special interest, and often there is 
most w^holesome instruction as to the concrete meaning 
of religion in family life, personal decency and agree- 
ableness, and sometimes in civic responsibility. Read- 
ing musical notation, singing, and appreciating good 
music were once to be obtained only in the winter sing- 
ing school of a few weeks. Just as this is now part 
of regular public school instruction, the teaching activi- 
ties of the church have expanded from "protracted 
meetings" held for a few weeks in the year, to the 
modern, graded school of religion. Surely no one will 
regret one change or the other. Yet as we look forward 
to "music festivals" for richer experience in a taste 
already acquired, not for acquiring its rudiments, the 
great religious convocations also have their large place 
to fill. It is to enrich, not to constitute, the life of 
Christians. 

The Place of Verbal Expression. The girl who is at 
this age making new discoveries and new resolves needs 
an opportunity to make them public and significant. 
The emotional warmth of the revival meeting, besides 
its pressure on the will, sometimes makes a congenial 
atmosphere for her to express her convictions and 
loyalty. The young people's societies, which in the 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 257 

days of their widest extent received their great impetus 
from the revival meeting, were planned especially to 
give young people practice in oral expression of their 
ideals of life, and for fellowship in religious interests. 

The average meeting of this kind has two dangers: 
one of omission and one of emphasis, and both are real 
and constant. There is danger of omitting the idea 
of hard work in daily duty and special service as part 
of the distinctly religious concept. To this is due much 
of the disturbance of earnest souls over the "present 
tendency of the church to substitute social service for 
religion," as though either could be adequate without 
including the other. The danger of emphasis is due to 
the fact that the emotional temperament is usually the 
more fluent in speech, and finds speech itself a stimulus 
to agreeable emotion. The girl whose nerve connections 
are always made without violence or difficulty, and 
seldom with emotional accompaniment, may either be 
discouraged at her inability to experience what others 
report* or her efforts to meet the expectation of public 
opinion may result in insincerity. There is also danger 
of forming the habit of mere verbal expression of ideals. 
The speech muscles may be the only ones with which 
motor connections are formed! 

A truer conception of the "devotional meeting" of the 
young people is that of a "seminar," or place to report 
their experiences in their own research with spiritual 
forces. The laws of these spiritual forces are part of 
the church's continuous, systematic instruction, just as 
the school class room gives the laws of chemical combi- 
nations or of growing life. As the scientific principles 



* See Bibliography, Number 76, chap, xviii, for a discussion of other aspects of 
this subject. 



258 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

are made a personal possession by experience in the 
laboratory, shop, or farm, so the principles of religious 
living are tested out in the problems of daily life. In 
each sphere there is great value in comparing experi- 
ences and sharing discoveries. The general '^testimony 
meetings" of the church, which have unfortunately 
fallen into disuse in some communions or some locali- 
ties, are of value to adolescents seeking to know the 
"experience" (in an unconsciously scientific sense) of 
the older people. Do they really "enjoy religion," or do 
they only think they ought to, and because they are 
older, do what they ought because it is duty? 

Every-Day Decisions and Actions. The young girPs 
"laboratory" is found in the moral problems of home, 
school, and business. There she decides what principle 
applies, uses it, and finds by its results the value of her 
solution. She spends more thought about her activities 
than in childhood or early adolescence, and she cares 
more about knowing the relation of her work to the 
success of the project than formerly. She is capable 
of doing the less pleasing part of organized work in 
order to have it "go through." But any appeal to devo- 
tion and religious loyalty must provide means for such 
activity that this attitude of mind and will shall be 
permanently and continuously produced. An appeal 
which leads to an emotional attitude without im- 
mediate outlet in activity is peculiarly dangerous at 
this age, for its temptation is always to dream, and 
dream, and not to do. Contemplation is more "satisfy- 
ing to the organism" — not than activity, but than stop- 
ping off contemplation to begin activity! A keen 
intellectual judgment of the right course of conduct, 
without a direct action to that end, leads to specula- 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 259 

tion and moral vacillation. She will act rightly; 
surely! for she has decided what is right to do — but 
she does not act. That is the sort of "good intentions" 
which form "paving stones" to the burning rubbish 
heap of character. When stress comes, one acts accord- 
ing to habit, and the only habit she is forming is that 
of not acting rightly, of confusing moral perception 
with character. 

Sometimes a girl at this age (perhaps from some of 
the functional causes mentioned on pp. 165ff.) develops 
an abnormally sensitive conscience.^ She needs to see 
that action is the imperative thing. If the consequence 
of that act proves it to have been the wrong one, she 
will know next time that the alternative is to be chosen. 
Thus proved, she has reason enough to act every time. 
"If any man will to do his will, he shall know the 
teaching" is the key principle for this period. Moral 
experience comes from moral activity, and without 
experience there is not the raw material of knowledge. 
Here is one reason for the epoch of doubt which often 
appears at this age.^ Early adolescence is skeptical, 
testing everything. Doubt is refusal to experiment. 
We believe, without question, whatever fits in with our 
experiences and habits. When facts come to the atten- 
tion which do not fit in with present habits of thought, 
the misfit is painful. The romantic Ideals have been 
built out of known but limited bits of the Real. If the 
disturbing fact is undeniable, a girl often tends to 
doubt the ideal, the whole of it. But she must be made 
to act, to find out how much of it is still true, and thus 
be able to make her larger readjustments. 

s See Number 58, Coe.The Spiritual Life, chap. ii. Also Latimer, Number 108, p. 55. 
" Compare the discussion of this problem from a different angle in the preceding 
chapter, pp. 248ff. 



260 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Moral Steadfastness. The first personal realization 
of the ugly facts of sin, connected with real people 
known to her, is inevitably a time of crisis. The world- 
old problem is upon her. It is not its intellectual solu- 
tion that concerns us here so much as the fact that 
she must not run away from it. In the presence of the 
new knowledge, she must act. Whether the experience 
results in wholesomeness or blight depends upon the 
motor connections that are made. If the emotional 
reaction is at once fastened to a purpose to "do some- 
thing about it" as soon as she is old enough and wise 
enough, the intensity of the emotion will help to or- 
ganize all past and future experiences along the line 
of this knowledge into energy to combat the conditions 
which sully other lives. If the emotion is discharged 
only in a purposeless horror, the subject will tend to 
form a "submerged complex" which will drag down 
with it and foul the pure springs of family affection. 

There must now be introduced into her experience, 
if she has not already known them, the counterbalanc- 
ing facts : There are true and reliable friends, boys with 
high ideals, and men and women of rocklike integrity. 
Not one of them "just grew" without struggle and 
determination. The difference when the crisis came 
was because they had never once excused an exception 
to right action. It is the exception that "doesn't 
matter" that makes possible the exception that matters 
for life and death. Goodness and beauty of character 
are won, not dreamed. Can she herself be trusted any- 
where and at any time by any of her friends? Does 
she never once fail to keep high and true the ideal 
of womanhood, in every boy and man she knows ? Does 
she never fail in an obligation, expecting to "make it 



THE PKOBLEM OF EXPRESSION 261 

right next time" ? When she sees character as a process 
which God shares with the will of every individual, she 
can see a new goodness and beauty in things, not as she 
dreamed them, but as they are. The adventure of living 
is not in romances of knights and ladies of old, nor in 
the motion dramas, but in her making it easier not to 
cheat in her schoolroom, and impossible for the foreman 
in her factory to think that all girls are common. 

Prayer. The emotional affection of a young girl, 
her fondness for intimacies and secret understandings, 
and her need to '^talk over" her problems, together form 
a strong impetus to prayer. If she practices a habit of 
prayer that asks ^'What wilt thou have me to do. Lord?" 
and then does it, it will be a powerful help in forming 
a rich and sympathetic womanhood. Her understand- 
ing of the motives and purposes of Jesus, and of the 
men and women who are worthy to be her heroes, will 
grow as she prayerfully applies them to her own life. 
She may turn about her own longing to be "understood" 
by seeing how many people she can learn to under- 
stand.''' Meeting the needs thus found will drive her 
to further prayer for the sympathy and wisdom that 
she cannot give of herself. 

It is easier now than in the shy, self-conscious years 
of early adolescence to talk about the deeper interests 
of life with friends whose sympathy is assured. If the 
adoree leads the more intimate and fervently personal 
discussions to include the Unseen Friend, she has estab- 
lished one of the best safeguards against undue devo- 
tion to herself. Social fellowship in prayer can be 
made a natural development of this mutual seeking for 



7 Everybody's Lonesome, by C. E. Laughlin, contains an excellent object-lesson 
for the "misunderstood" and "unappreciated" girl. 



262 GIKLHOOD AND CHAEACTEK 

divine strength and guidance expressed at first in the 
smaller and more intimate groups. The secret prayer 
circle and the Sunday school class, under wise leader- 
ship, give valuable training in one indispensable form 
of religious expression. 

Honesty. There are certain principles of conduct 
which every girl will readily admit as binding, but 
there are certain forms of their application which many 
girls fail to see. Honesty is seen to apply to matters 
of money; but how about the employer's time in the 
extra five minutes at the lunch hour ? or the lead pencil 
she carries home because it is better than one she would 
buy? And how about the time she spends finishing 
the absorbing story? Does it mean but five hours of 
sleep, and diminished efficiency because of the head- 
ache during working hours next day? Many a girl 
w^ho would be horrified at the suggestion of stealing 
property belonging to others grows into a habit of 
carelessness with their possessions. She eases her 
conscience by the words she uses. It can be made to 
seem perfectly legitimate to ''borrow," and if sister or 
mother or chum happens not to be available to ask 
permission before the article is used, it is easy to 
assume that "they won't care." The possession of an- 
other would never be deliberately appropriated, but its 
return is "forgotten." And so sister's lace handker- 
chief is lost, and mother's scarf is hopelessly soiled and 
torn, and brother seeks high and low before his exam- 
ination for his drawing tools, and chum has to pay for 
the library book which has so mysteriously disappeared. 
If the girl can be helped to apply the right words to 
these acts, her self-scorn will usually effect a reforma- 
tion. 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 263 

Much loss comes from another sort of carelessness, 
that of not planning ahead for the time or the money 
to meet obligations. An excellent suggestion has been 
carried out by some girls. They make out a budget 
and an expense account, of both time and money. The 
money budget will include all the items for which 
money is needed, and indicate their proportional value. 
How much of the allowance is to be spent for self 
and how much for others? The expense account will 
account for the actual expenditure of every penny. It 
may reval the fact that ice cream sodas have made it 
impossible for her to hear the great concert, or have 
her eyes examined, or take her share in the class contri- 
bution to the Red Cross. The expense account of time 
will show, if the intervals "between times" are honestly 
divided into the two or five minutes so easily dropped 
from the reckoning, which she really values more: a 
gossip with the girls, or the music lesson she has "no 
time" to practice. It may be also that if the educator 
or parent has access to the time budget, some demands 
may be lightened for her, to give opportunity for more 
outdoor exercise and wholesome fun. At any rate, the 
purposeful arrangement of "To each day, 24 hours, 
Debtor," will help the busiest or the most idle. 

Honor. Another habit of real moral importance 
arises in connection with her friendly intimacies. She 
must learn what not to tell. The ideal of a fine reti- 
cence is a high one for women. It is, undeniably, 
hugely "satisfying to the organism" of most women to 
take advantage of other women's instinctive interest in 
persons and to be the first to impart news which vitally 
concerns some mutual acquaintance. That was an 
enviable attainment of the woman about whom the 



264 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

following comment was overheard on a street car: 
^^She never starts to tell jou anything she does not 
mean to tell; and when she does tell anything, you 
know it's straight.'' The homely but expressive collo- 
quialism of a post card motto is worthy a place in 
every girl's mirror: "It is as bad to spill over as it is 
to leak." Women with business training learn neither 
to spill nor to leak where the affairs of their employers 
are concerned. Yet few of them transfer this principle 
of fair dealing to any other relationship ; even the most 
trustworthy business woman may not have this honor 
in regard to using information relating to her own 
interests, however obtained. Every girl ought to have 
drilled into habit these principles: "Information com- 
ing into your possession by chance, but not intended for 
you, does not belong to you at all. Information given 
you in confidence is a partnership affair. The first you 
have no right to give to any one. The second may not 
be honorably used without the partner's permission." 

The attitude of most girls (and boys) of high school 
age to property, to conditions of athletic and scholar- 
ship honors, and to rules regulating the group life is 
at such great variance from the adult standard set for 
them, that it seems to indicate a spontaneous reaction 
of adolescent groups. It is probably due to the fact 
that the larger social relations entered at this age need 
more definite educative preparation than is usually 
made for them. The child must be governed by au- 
thority. Unless she is given progressive practice in 
self-control, judgment, and liberty, she w^ill come to 
this larger freedom with the spirit of the serf. The 
schoolmate is a fellow bondsman, whose common inter- 
ests are all in outwitting the demands and regulations 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 265 

of school and teacher. It is essentially the conflict of 
class interests which is fatal to cooperation as fellow 
citizens. Usually the failure of "self-government" and 
"honor systems" at this age (or later) is due to their 
form being imposed, whether by faculty or a minority 
of their own number, before the group demand for them 
is conscious and responsible. 

It is difficult for the amateur in self-direction to 
make distinctions in the source of rules and regula- 
tions. It makes little difference to a girl whether a rule 
was imposed by a teacher or adopted by her own vote ; 
when it becomes a personal annoyance she will seek to 
evade it.^ She will develop a sense of civic responsi- 
bility only when failure to uphold the civic ideal 
results in the greater annoyingness of disapproval from 
the group, or those members of it whose approval is 
valued. The development of this public disapproval is 
hindered by the intensely individualistic attitude of 
the girls who themselves obey the rules. "A girl next 
me in examination signaled me to lay my paper where 
she could see a needed formula. I despised her for 
cheating, but that was her lookout !" A teacher chanced 
to see this occurrence and said to t;he girl who allowed 
the other to cheat, "To whom do you turn for help 
of any kind — one who is weaker than yourself, or one 
who is stronger?" Then he persisted: "Did not this 
girl by asking your help in the examination acknowl- 
edge that you were stronger than she? Then whose is 
the greater responsibility?" Years afterward this girl 
said, "This made me see clearly my moral responsibility 



8 This is not a sex-characteristic, exclusively. Attempts to "foul" have to be 
vigilantly watched for in boys' games; and it was to a man high in public office 
that tradition attributed the semi-serious witticism, "What is the Constitution 
between friends?" 



266 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

for the actions of those who had had less help in family 
training and ideals than I had." 

It takes a highly developed honor to help the tempted 
girl to call an action by its right name, or to express 
an effective disapproval. A still higher achievement of 
honor and social responsibility is willingness to suffer 
personal unpleasantness for the sake of justice and 
righteousness in the community life. Reluctance to 
report cheating in games or examinations, or ^^swiping" 
of public or club property, or serious offenses against 
the rules of the school, seem to be partly due to the 
scorn of ''tattling." This is the result of the ''class 
consciousness" just noted, which identifies loyalty with 
a personal relation to individuals as opposed to the 
relation to the good of the whole group. A conscien- 
tious girl can usually be helped to see that individual 
and social good are really one. Patient training of the 
leaders into a true social consciousness is the educa- 
tor's difficult task. At no point in the developing life 
is wholeness more vital. A girl who had been active 
in "personal work" in a revival was found to be habitu- 
ally breaking a certain rule of the school and trying 
to escape detection. The teacher who appealed to her 
ambition for religious leadership as a motive for chang- 
ing her attitude met the astonished response : "I don't 
see what that has to do with it !" Loyalty to law and 
order must be made a natural expression of religion. 
The educator who would establish such a social reli- 
gious consciousness must be one "also under authority," 
not of the same rules as the immature young people, 
but of the same principles of good will and honor. 

The Honor Record. Once a girl's attention is alive 
to the fundamental relation of her religion to her 



THE PROBLEM OP EXPRESSION 267 

personal and social habits, she will be eager for help 
in forming new habits and breaking undesirable ones. 
The keeping of a ^^practice record" is an educational 
device that works well in acquiring such new habits 
as typewriting. How many minutes does it take to 
write a certain number of lines without an error? To 
see the daily record of decreased time and increased 
accuracy is a great spur. It might work well with 
some girls to keep an ^'honor record" for themselves 
of the number of times they lose their tempers or are 
spiteful or exaggerate. The attention thus centered 
will of itself help to reduce the daily record of lapses. 
But while ^^practice makes perfect/' she must be sure 
that practice is of the perfect thing. To do a thing 
one hundred times, making in it one hundred times 
the same mistake, is to perfect the mistake as surely 
as the rightly performed part of it. And doing right 
things does not make a whole character unless those 
things are done consciously to carry out the principle 
of the whole. Handling over bricks may be made a 
useful exercise if the bricks are purposively placed; 
otherwise the only result will be sore muscles and — a 
heap of bricks. ^^Self-denial" for a purpose is worth 
while, but "doing something just because" she ^'^ hates 
it !" will be of little permanent value to the girl. The 
worthy impulse must be linked with the further 
thoughtfulness that seeks the comfort or the good of 
some one else. 

Reverence. There is another problem, in a certain 
sense also one of honor, which arises only with the 
clever and witty girl. She is apt to be irreverent and 
flippant. Like the slang of early adolescence, this is 
part of the intellectual revolt against the commonplace 



268 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

and exxoected. To such a girl with a literary back- 
ground, the parody has an almost irresistible appeal. 
Unless you have humor enough to appreciate the pure 
witticism of it as she does, and to keep from being 
shocked, you cannot help. But if she fails to produce 
the expected shock, and knows it is not because you are 
too stupid to see the point, you may help her to see 
what the law of association of ideas entails. Some day 
when the real experience which prompted the poem or 
quotation or sermon or prayer comes to her, it will not 
be the help of their lesson, but the parody or jest which 
will come to mind ; and in the presence of human need 
they will seem mirthless. Moreover, if she is not spoil- 
ing the help for herself, she may be for some one else. 
Fun to be real must not hurt anybody. 

Companionship and Organization. It is not because 
some older person thinks she needs '^improving" that 
a girl will join clubs and classes for information, but 
because she wants to keep up with the times. The 
customs and curio interest of childhood, and the life- 
story interest of early adolescence, continue with little 
abatement, and join naturally with the world-service 
vision of this period. Service just as naturally leads 
to seeking information, to be efficient ; and both service 
and information are fun, and all give scope for develop- 
ing executive efficiency and learning how to work with 
others. All of these are indispensable factors in reli- 
gious and moral expression. It is a poorly organized 
life that does not include varied interests, political, 
social, and industrial. The desire for wholeness and 
efficiency will soon bring up problems of choice in 
companions and activities, and the problem of democ- 
racy may be acute, even in church relationships. In a 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 269 

small Sunday school the grading may throw together 
girls who seem to have little in common. In a large 
church the class that includes only those who are in 
the same "set" at home and school is missing some 
opportunities, as well as evading some problems. The 
leadership of a wise teacher and the interests of com- 
mon class activities make the organized class a power 
in widening the lives of its members. 

As interests develop from year to year, and the power 
for effective combination increases, larger and more 
inclusive projects become possible. Greater independ- 
ence of responsibility will be gladly assumed by the 
group. Independent judgment is developed by practice, 
and by meeting the consequences of the judgments 
made. The objects of middle adolescent organizations 
are usually fun, knowledge, and service — separately or 
together. The Camp Fire group and the organized 
class or club are no less gripping than in earlier adoles- 
cence. For the boys' sake rather more than the girls' 
their organizations should be kept separate. Chivalry 
and awkwardness in the boys combine with glibness 
and assurance in the girls to make joint organizations 
a one-sided affair. But there may be almost unlimited 
joint meetings and socials. The club which is host or 
hostess can introduce surprises and make suggestions 
which would lose their effectiveness or cause hot dis- 
pute if jointly discussed. And, moreover, the separate 
meetings are invaluable opportunities for the leaders 
to talk over social and personal conduct in an intimate 
way otherwise impossible. 

Leadership. If a group of girls has already learned 
parliamentary procedure, guidance will be needed 
rather in general aims and purposes and particular 



270 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

difificulties than in routine activities. Club leadership 
should never be undertaken bj any woman who does 
not know the difference between interference and 
counsel. And the leader who is in earnest to develop 
each member of her group must never ignore what 
teachers call the ''point of contact."^ It is the point 
of departure from where she is to where you want her 
to be; and in her language it is "up to you," not to 
her, to find it. If she is to be moved in any given 
direction, it must be through one of the interests which 
have invariable power to move her. Then if you are 
to go together, you must let it move you too. One of 
the universal interests, manifesting itself in infinite 
variation, is the desire to have "something doing." 
More than ever, now that work or school confine the 
still growing body, fun must include plenty of outdoor 
exercise. Athletic interests continue with unabated 
appeal, and the woman whose thirty, forty, or fifty 
years are forgotten as they "hike" or camp with her 
is the one without whom the good times that include 
boys will be incomplete. 

Social Service. Knowledge sought in these voluntary 
organizations is of big, living interests of the world, 
or of forms of skill that may be a hobby or a pastime, 
rather than of the things of school and trade life. It 
may include anything all the group wishes to know, 
from chafing-dish cookery or personal hygiene to cur- 
rent events or poetry. Social and labor conditions 
should be a part of every girl's knowledge, and can be 
made of thrilling interest if gained by visiting hos- 
pitals, asylums, and great industrial plants (especially 



9 Read Margaret Slattery's Talks With the Training Class, pp. 46ff., and all of 
Patterson Dubois's The Point of Contact in Teaching. 



THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION 271 

those making things girls use). Then they will want 
to know why so many persons are crippled or tubercu- 
lous or blind; where their relatives are; who pays for 
their care; what wages they earned; what else can 
they do, and many other vital facts. All this will 
accumulate a fund of impulses to "do something about 
it" which must have immediate outlet in the kind of 
activities cited in Chapter VII (pp. 151ff.). It is im- 
perative that the connection of knowledge and an 
appropriate form of unselfish service become habitual. 

SUMMARY 

This is the age at which emotion and sentiment may 
be expected to be at their maximum in each girl, 
although individual differences are nearly as great now 
as at any other time. Appeal to emotion and sentiment 
are therefore legitimate, if wisely made. Social wor- 
ship and private devotion may now be directed into 
habits that will achieve richest results. Provision must 
be made for the testing out of ideals in social and 
cooperative life, and the relation between religion and 
righteousness made vital and conscious and intelligent. 
The new worth of personality, and affectionate devotion 
to the supreme Person, must be socially interpreted as 
Jesus taught : "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me." 



The problems of the crisis period call for promptness 
rather than haste. The girl is swiftly changing and 
taking form, and there is much to be done. By the 



272 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

time her stature and manners and clothes and ideals 
and friends and activities all seem to belong together 
enough so that she and we can recognize the combina- 
tion several times in succession, it is perhaps safe to 
consider that the ''crisis of middle adolescence" is 
passed. The "integration of the self" is accomplished, 
but the new self is very young. Much remains to be 
achieved before maturity. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 16, 19, 25, 26, 29, 54, 55, 56, 57, (59 j, 71, 76, 
88, 131, 132, 148. 



PART IV 
LATER ADOLESCENCE 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL 
SIGNIFICANCE 

The recognition of adolescence as a period of human 
life separate from childhood and from maturity has 
been a slow achievement of civilization. Its beginnings 
are seen in the puberty rites with which primitive peo- 
ples marked the passage of the individual from one 
status to the other. The most recent development of 
society's valuation of the ^^lengthened infancy" (that 
is, the longer teachableness) of the individual is the 
extension of recognized adolescence into the late teens 
and beyond them. 

Indeterminate Limits of This Period. Regarding this 
last and longest of the three accepted divisions of the 
period between childhood and womanhood, it is more 
than ever difficult to speak intelligibly or truly of 
"all girls." The limits of this period are vaguely 
marked by the recognizable reintegration of the person- 
ality after the storm of the crisis period, and the 
settling down into the work and responsibilities of 
mature life. In the same general way, the ages at 
which it is customary to think of a young woman as 
still an adolescent are between seventeen or eighteen, 
and perhaps twenty-five. It is the upper limit which 
is extending in our own generation. Our mothers 
married at twenty-one, their mothers at eighteen, and 
their mothers' mothers at sixteen. Our sisters rarely 
marry before twenty- five, and if they are thirty or thirty- 

275 



276 GIELHO<jr> aXI' lHLiEACTEE 



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^^r " _: :_ I." ii. lividoals are 

:. „--.:_r -. .-.:.. '.-.z^i r :::iOinic respoz- 



TiTirT 



H 



rX- 



fa miliar to ih'. 



SIGNIFICANCE 277 

automatic response ; the fatigue of tension and surprise 
and the exhaustion of growth are both past ; the senses 
are at their keenest; the muscles most tractable and 
delicate, and the possible range of sensori-motor con- 
nections is now widest and most easily made. There 
are no absolutely new instincts to develop, but their 
relative strength of impulse and of satisfyingness 
changes rapidly as changing environment or inner 
growth stimulate or inhibit them. One of the tokens 
of maturity is a fairly stable equilibrium of funda- 
mental instinctive interests and emotions, after experi- 
ence has offered a normal stimulus for them all. 

Its Sociological Significance. Another aspect of this 
later period marks it off from those that have preceded. 
They were forward-looking in their social significance ; 
society was concerned with a future product. The 
educator's concern was fairly equally divided between 
the development of individual possibilities and the 
presentation of the experience of the race, in such a 
manner that the girl might be best equipped to know 
and to do. These years are also forward-looking — but 
to the immediate future. Physiologically, nature has 
finished her product. The claims of present society 
and of the coming generation are pressed upon the 
individual with an inner and outer urgency unknown 
before. The great business of life is no longer to be 
put off, and the immediate interest of the young woman 
and of society is her efficiency as a member of that 
society. This efficiency, both sociological and physio- 
logical, is a matter of health and of skill. 

The Social Demand for Skill. Skill is, physiologically 
speaking, a coordination of habits between senses, 
muscles, and ideas. These years are important to 



278 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

society for economic efficiency because the nerve con- 
nections are still plastic, making the acquirement of 
new habits possible and easy; senses, muscles, and 
brain are usually in their most perfect condition ; and 
the cessation of growth fatigue and emotional ferment 
has released a maximum of energy. The degree of 
perfection of this physical adjustment depends on the 
health foundations laid in the preceding years. 
Eagerly, and with a sort of vehement patience, educa- 
tors and social w^orkers are trying to bring home to 
those who hold the destiny of youth the demonstrated 
results of too early labor. The girl who engages in 
hard work at fourteen is less skillful at sixteen, and 
often useless at twenty. There are bound to be gaps 
in her development that nothing can bridge. Anyone 
who has worked both with schoolgirls and with girls 
of the same age employed in any factory process feels 
the difference more keenly than can be described. Said 
an industrial secretary of the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association, after speaking at a private secondary 
school : ^'How good it seems to see young girls all 
blooming and juicij! My girls appear so sapped." How 
could they be otherwise, when the maturing responsi- 
bilities and the achievement of skill, instead of being 
allowed ten years are crowded into two or three, and 
those telescoped into the crisis of individual growth? 

Social Responsibility for Skill. To acquire skill it is 
not necessary to spend years in unproductive ''practice 
work." If early and middle adolescence have been free 
from undue physical and economic burdens, the period 
under consideration may well be one in which a good 
start is made in the actual work of the permanent 
vocation. The foe to skill is not wholesome hard 



SIGNIFICANCE 279 

work, but unprogressive work. When one process is 
mastered, the logical next step is a more complicated 
process, rather than a speeding up in the simpler one. 
This speeding in an isolated part of a process is pro- 
ducing not a skillful workman, but a piece of human 
machinery. If the human mechanism is interfered with 
by any accident, or if economic changes dispense with 
the process altogether, the machinery, human as ruth- 
lessly as metal, is thrown on the industrial scrapheap. 

An adjustment of the entire problem involves eco- 
nomic, industrial, administrative, and political ques- 
tions which would lead too far afield from the ethical 
and educational aspect to which this study is confined, 
but they are part of every individual's concern. The 
educator who has any part of the responsibility for 
any young woman's social efficiency must realize 
deeply the potency of these years for acquiring skill. 
Now, skill includes not only ability to do certain 
mental and muscular processes quickly and well, but 
also ability to see desirable ends, and to adjust means 
to ends. Further, when conditions are altered, skill 
implies ability to attain these or other desirable ends 
by adapting other means. The swift changes of our 
present decade indicate that by the time our present 
adolescents are mature adults, adaptability will be 
more essential for success than in any preceding age 
of the world. 

Health as a Factor in Efficiency. The ability to "make 
good," however, depends fully as much on reserve 
energy as on technical and professional skill. Normal 
physiological processes, if unhindered in their working, 
make this period one of overflowing energy. Excep- 
tional circumstances, personal or social, may alter indi- 



280 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

vidual cases, but in the race as a whole these years are 
the ones for mating, and culminate in motherhood. So 
this is the time when the young woman's life must be 
abundant enough for the needs of herself and of her 
children. The frequency of the exceptions found in our 
own civilization is the cause of many of the psychologi- 
cal and social problems to be considered. However, 
for every young woman and for every one who deter- 
mines the conditions of her life, the fundamental physi- 
ological and sociological fact is that for efficient per- 
sonality, efficient motherhood, and efficient work, posi- 
tive, complete health is the first essential. 

Habit as a Factor in Health. The girl who has been 
wisely helped during her earlier teens to establish the 
habit of health now needs only to find and preserve the 
conditions which will maintain it. The one who has 
bad habits of eating, sleeping, and exercising, or any 
of whose normal functions are deranged, must inaugu- 
rate a conscious campaign for physical efficiency. This 
is the easier to accomplish because of the already noted 
continuance of plasticity. But habits are becoming 
every day harder to make and to break, and the matter 
should be taken up with all the vigor and persistence 
its importance demands. In bringing it to the center 
of attention, there is a vast difference between a con- 
scientious determination to have and to hold health 
as a means for happy and useful living, and that 
morbid carefulness and fear of disease which some- 
times becomes, perhaps unconsciously, a fashion or a 
fad. It was this abnormal emphasis which was recog- 
nized by a widowed mother on a farm near a small 
countr-y town. "I am glad," said she, "that my two 
girls got started for college before they had been long 



SIGNIFICANCE 28|. 

enough with the girls who stay at home to talk them- 
selves into invalidism. Most of our girls finish high 
school and then do nothing more active than light 
housework, embroidery and crocheting. When they 
meet to sew, they talk over their ^feelings/ and most of 
them find some ailment to make themselves interest- 
ing." 

Instigating the Purpose of Health. Under present 
conditions of sanitation, ventilation, and working 
hours, real health is impossible for many young women. 
Every friend of girls and women, no matter how humble 
and uninfluential she may seem, has her definite duty 
toward remedying these conditions. But the crying 
need for things that must be done toward altering the 
environment need not make us forget that such changes 
in the environment will only offer the opportunity for 
health; they will not secure health to the individual 
young woman. It is only her eternal vigilance in 
meeting the personal conditions of her own situation 
that can do that. A little woman, who had to reach 
up to place the coats and dresses over the shoulders 
of most of her customers, kept on year after year in 
work that seemed too hard for her to attempt. She 
kept a home together for her children by doing addi- 
tional work evenings, and the walk to the store was 
her only chance for outdoor exercise. 

"How do you do it ?" asked an interested customer. 

"I never miss a morning in breathing as deep as I 
can before my wide-open window, and going through 
my exercises" (describing some simple movements to 
counteract the muscular tension of her daily work). 
"There is too much depending on my keeping well for 
me to let myself forget." 



282 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

But this woman not only knew the importance of 
keeping well, she knew how. One of the greatest serv- 
ices that can be rendered to many a young woman of 
ability is a friendly insistence on her taking adequate 
care of herself, for the sake of the present and the 
future. Sometimes it is suflScient to call attention to 
omissions and neglect, perhaps introducing the exhorta- 
tion with a confession of personal experience of the 
results of such omissions. Sometimes a motherly or 
big-sisterly authority must be exercised, to see to it 
that eyes, ears, throat, teeth, or other needs have the 
attention of a specialist. Often there must be patient 
and persistent work done by some one, first to establish 
the motive for health, then to teach the elementary 
principles of bodily care, and finally to provide ways 
and means for that care. 

Prevalent Ignorance of Health Principles. Teachers 
and club workers of experience will agree that the 
average older girl's ignorance of physiology and 
hygiene is almost incredible. But it is easily explain- 
able. There is in many States, it is true, a legal re- 
quirement to teach physiology in certain of the grades, 
usually with special reference to the effect of alcohol 
and narcotics. But school boards have usually reduced 
the time available to the teacher to the legal minimum, 
and a textbook drill has seemed all that could be at- 
tempted. The writing of an elementary textbook in 
any science is a difficult art. Some of those in use are 
admirable, but some have been written by persons 
whose special interest was in the phase of temperance 
teaching, and others by those who were more familiar 
with medical colleges and hospitals than with the men- 
tal processes of children of the ages in the specified 



SIGNIFICANCE 283 

grades. One teacher of biology was once required to 
give the legal "thirty lessons" in physiology to the 
seventh grade by taking each of live sections one day 
a week. There was no time for assigning the advance 
lesson other than by the formula, "Take the next five 
paragraphs." One of these paragraphs read approxi- 
mately as follows : "The inside of the intestines is not 
smooth like the outside, but is lined with minute pro- 
jections called villi (from the Latin villus^ a tuft of 
hair). These reach into the digested food and let cer- 
tain parts of it pass through their thin walls." 

The teacher said, "Katie, describe the lining of the 
intestines." 

Katie's association of ideas produced the terse reply : 
"The intestines are lined with sealskin !" 

Club girls, questioned about their school study of 
physiology, have replied : "O, yes, that's where you see 
pictures of drunkards' stomachs." There are valuable 
facts in many of these textbooks, but the girls have not 
gotten them. This is one of the many problems the 
school has to solve. Trained and experienced teachers 
are working toward solutions of the teaching problems 
in nature study, personal and social hygiene, and the 
fundamental facts of biology, anatomy, and physiology 
that are needed by every child to understand the func- 
tions of life and sex. Their results will help the young 
woman who is now a little girl in the kindergarten or 
the grades, but many of these same teaching problems 
have now to be faced by the friend of the girl who 
"didn't elect it" in high school or college, or who went 
to work before she "got that far" in the grades. 

Obstacles to Health Education : a. In Available Sources. 
One difficulty faced by the leader of young women is 



284 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the interminable number of technical words which drip 
naturally from the pen of the textbook writer. By the 
time "the interior, the exterior, and the bacteria" have 
been divided and defined, the average club girl is ready 
to retire with awe, and give up the attempt to under- 
stand how to run and oil her own bodily machine. 
Happily there are exceptions: magazine writers who 
can make a thrilling drama of bacteriological attacks 
and counter attacks, and the plots and counter plots 
of bacilli and blood corpuscles; lecturers who can 
make the chemistry of digestion as fascinating as a 
fairy tale; and in nearly every community genial 
family physicians who can inspire respect and esteem 
for cold baths and overshoes. There are also some 
admirable texts available on the subject of personal 
hygiene.^ 

The chief problem is that of all teaching: to get the 
person to see the relation of the subject to her own 
life. It is the Sunday school teacher or club leader 
or college adviser who knows the young woman's need 
who must get her to see it as her need. Then the in- 
formation can be gotten for her, or with her, in any 
way that insures its reliability. It is the friend's part 
to secure interest and receptivity; specialists will be 
glad to impart the knowledge. When a certain health 
club announced "Oral Hygiene'" for its next lecture, a 
business girl said, indignantly, "Just as if I didn't 
know enough to brush my teeth !" and her teeth flashed 
white as she spoke. But a friend convinced her there 
must be "more to it" to require a whole evening, and 
she went. A young woman dentist told of the extent 
of preventive and corrective work with young children, 

1 See Bibliography, Numbers 98, 114, 115. 



SIGNIFICANCE 285 

and this girl decided that she could afford to have her 
little niece spared the chagrin of an ill-shaped mouth. 
Then she thought, "If only the cure for pyorrhea had 
been known five years sooner, mother need not have 
lost her sound teeth." . . . "I'm going to ask the girl in 
our office who suffers so terribly with neuralgia and 
indigestion if she ever had that ulcerated tooth treated 
afterward." 

b. In the Girl's Mental Attitude. Another difficulty 
is the uncertainty how any individual girl will regard 
a reference to her physiological processes.^ Instinctive 
responses vary unaccountably. In his textbook in 
psychology James gives a naive description of his aston- 
ishment in his own childhood at his experience of faint- 
ing at the sight of blood, although his conscious feeling 
was not disgust but curiosity. Associations of which 
even the girl herself may be unaware may have bound 
to some of her instinctive emotional reflexes a whole 
mass of otherwise indifferent stimuli. It is due to 
these conscious or unconscious associations that many 
girls show the same disgust responses to words describ- 
ing the processes of circulation, digestion, or muscular 
activity as to the touch or sight or smell of blood or 
skeletons. A skillful teacher, in book or lecture, can 
succeed in focusing attention on the living process 
rather than on the dissected and separate factors, and 
ultimately the girl with the most undisciplined emo- 
tions can achieve a scientific attitude. 

Akin to the instinctive or automatic refusal to con- 
template physiological processes as such, is the con- 
sistent avoidance of topics that are intensely personal. 
Many a young woman truly feels that to speak of any- 

« Compare Chapter XIII, p. 227. 



286 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

thing which goes on within is an indelicate breach of 
reserve. Has she not been taught from her earliest 
infancy that mastication must be performed behind 
closed lips that it may not offend others? (This form 
of "modesty of habit" is probably more often found 
among older young women than among young girls.) 
But here, as in offering financial advice, or condolence, 
or in any other intimate affair, the acceptability of 
what is said depends very largely on who says it. Only 
those may speak without impertinence who speak with 
authority, who are sought as experts in religion or law 
or medicine, or those whose personal affection has 
given special privilege. The proved friend, who has 
won the girl's confidence, may approach her health 
problem without intrusiveness. The specialist who 
lectures at the club or university extension course may 
be asked the frankest questions as to the causes of 
observed conditions of pain or worry. However it is 
begun, one of the desirable results of health education 
is to help the girl to become less personal and indi- 
vidual in her attitude toward universal laws, and to 
take a social view of her individual bodily machinery. 

The Problem of Incentive. Ignorant of the principles 
of health as many girls in college or factory or office 
may be, most of them know more than they practice. 
There must be an adequate motive to insure taking the 
needed exercise or spending the longer time over meals ; 
there must be some one to provide the good cheer which 
banishes worry habits; and exercise must be the kind 
one can afford. The key to the situation is found 
almost invariably in one word : companionship — quali- 
fied, perhaps, by "the right kind of" companionship. 
"Everybody's lonesome," 'tis true, but while one wants 



SIGNIFICANCE 287 

companions in misery, one never wants miserable com- 
panions; and there are so many valuable means to 
health that simply do not exist for one alone. Two 
business girls may chatter and laugh through a simple 
luncheon that will sustain them through a hard after- 
noon's work. The same food partaken in solitary and 
hurried silence would probably stay as a mere hinder- 
ing lump, giving no strength; but fancy either of the 
girls laughing and chattering to herself! It takes a 
strong mind to impel to a daily walk alone, even after 
the walking habit is well established. If business is 
near enough, the need of economy may prompt the walk 
as a means of saving carfare ; but if Dorothy or Charley 
suggests a five-mile tramp, it is taken with glee and 
with profit. One might be sufiiciently afraid of drown- 
ing to take private swimming lessons before a trip to 
Europe, but it is both a greater incentive and a greater 
benefit to look forward to a frolic in the swimming pool 
one evening a week with friends. 

Social Eesponsibility for Health. The close of high 
school brings to many a later adolescent the necessity 
of going away from all wonted conditions, to acquire 
skill, or to give it to the world in exchange for her 
means of existing. The country is too many nickels 
distant; the swimming pool is five or ten dollars a 
season ; and dancing under right conditions is only for 
those who have homes, or wealth, and leisure. Worry 
and loneliness and the "unsatisfyingness of not exer- 
cising" the instincts that are ripest in her, rob the 
young woman of the very gifts the world demands of 
her. With lessened skill and weakened health there 
is soon another pale and uninteresting woman-machine, 
instead of the personality the world needs. As long 



288 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

as tired girls find interest and companionship acces- 
sible and within their means only in the bad air and 
cramped seats of the "movie" or the unsafe dance hall, 
or in listless walking or the sense-fatiguing glitter of 
the streets, so long will the young woman's health and 
efiSciency remain an unmet social responsibility, as well 
as an unperfected factor in society's progress. 

Not only must the conditions for mental and physical 
health be adequately provided by the community; 
through individual friendship the individual girl must 
be helped to avail herself of them. It is pathetic to 
find how many young women suffer for special medical 
care because they feel it is a luxury which they may 
deny themselves for the sake of the comfort the money 
will buy for others. With misdirected heroism they 
suffer the sapping and undermining from needless pain, 
or by allowing curable disease to get a relentless grip, 
they jeopardize their future and that of their children 
to be. Many a care-burdened young woman cherishes 
gratitude toward some older friend whose tenderness 
toward physical need has searched out the anxiously 
hidden suffering and insisted on the duty of removing 
that handicap to efiSciency. 

Problems of Conservation of Energy. Quite at the 
opposite extreme is the girl of exuberant vitality who 
glories in her careless waste of energy. It is hard for 
her to believe that her physical and mental vigor is 
not an artesian well that can go on pouring itself 
out night and day, endlessly; that she is draining a 
cistern that is meant to last through life, and in a few 
years she will find it all but dry and have to wait for 
strength to trickle back again. It seems so silly to 
save one's strength like an old woman ! The conviction 



SIGNIFICANCE 289 

that this splendid health is a trust fund is all that can 
insure its conscientious investment and a judicious use 
of the interest. This girl needs to realize that she has 
a long time to live after she is twenty-five, or even 
thirty; and she has no right to spendthrift use of the 
health capital of the woman she is to be. 

In the wise conservation of health, perhaps the worst 
offenders are the most conscientious and the most 
altruistic. Especially in the last years of adolescence, 
gripped by the life interests of maturity, comes the 
danger of a devotion to work which will shut out in- 
terests that are indirectly, but none the less fruitfully, 
contributory to the best work. In an occupation which 
of itself furnishes varied stimuli, it is difficult to see 
the need of any other. But it is eternally true that 
the more of health and spontaneity, of intelligent in- 
terest in many kinds of things, a woman has to offer, 
the more widely useful she can be. The young teacher 
or doctor or settlement worker or missionary sees so 
much of need, and so much that she can do, it seems 
selfish to refuse the extra hour that means only an 
hour less of sleep for herself. She is sure she will never 
miss it. An abnormal sense of duty oftentimes also 
prevents sufficient recreation. In her hours of clearest 
vision the young woman must gird on a protective 
armor of principle; and often she must have a relent- 
less friend to see that she does not take it off when she 
needs it most. Sometimes exceptional cases do arise, 
when the value of life would be cheapened by observing 
its normal rules. Yet rules once broken are easier to 
break again, and make it easier to slip into the path 
that leads to ultimate inadequacy. It often helps to 
adjust relative values to ask, ^^Is this service of such 



290 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

worth as to risk having to refuse ten such opportunities 
five years from now?" 

SUMMARY 

Our present civilization is increasing the length of 
adolescence. It postpones for many young women most 
of the maturing experiences — death of parents^ mar- 
riage, motherhood, the pressure of ultimate responsi- 
bility — and it is these crucial experiences that end 
adolescence. When realized with adult rather than 
childish comprehension, there is in them a moral, men- 
tal, and physical strain which few girls under twenty- 
five can undergo without mortgaging their future 
endurance. The early maturity of the young girls who 
toil in hard places is often followed by early senility. 
Society must jealously guard the freedom of these years 
and furnish adequate opportunity for every young 
woman to achieve health, moral and physical stamina 
for the demands of the long years to come, adapta- 
bility, and practical surety of judgment and skill in 
the work which adult life is to follow. By the scope 
of these opportunities society determines whether 
future womanhood is to be a decline as from a climax, 
a mere dead level of repetitious existence, or a steady 
increase in fullness and depth of power. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 6, 9, 10, 12, 25, 32, 69, 98, 109, 110, 111, 114, 
115, 116, 119, 120, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 

One who works with young girls finds the most 
noticeable characteristics in their early teens to be 
those connected with their physical development; in 
the middle years the emotions hold the center of atten- 
tion ; but in later youth the keenest interest is in mat- 
ters of thought and purpose. First the independent 
self is asserted, then its relations to life are felt — 
keenly but vaguely, in a blur of new experiences — and 
finally the self and its powers and responsibilities be- 
come the object of conscious and coherent thought. 

Purposive Thinking Characteristic of Later Youth. As 
soon as the thinking process can be disengaged from the 
spinal tremor and the pulsating thrill, every vital ex- 
perience must be subjected to "calm, critical, unemo- 
tional reason." The relation of the individual to the 
past, present, and future; to other individuals and 
to society in general; the infinite and the finite, and 
the interrelations of the universe in general and every- 
thing in particular, are problems that press for solu- 
tion. 

Variations in experience and information, in tem- 
perament and intellectual power, make the range of 
these thought buildings infinitely vary. One girPs 
horizon is bounded by ten hours' repetition of a me- 
chanical process, a squalid or discouraged home or a 

291 



292 GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

hall bedroom, one or two girl companions, and tlie 
hope of an invitation to a five-cent show. She may 
act on a vague conclusion that ''such as she" has noth- 
ing to expect but weariness, only to be made less diffi- 
cult by not stirring up trouble by complaint; or she 
may have enough vigor of mind and body to resent the 
situation even to the point of espousing anarchy. An- 
other girl, whose life has been crammed full of privi- 
leges, may accept them as the tribute due to her innate 
superiority ; or she may consider them means to perfect 
the contribution which her talents may give to the 
world; or she may hold them as a gift to be shared 
with the less fortunate. But each is sure to weigh 
what explanations of life she hears, and to accept or 
reject them for herself. Underneath the almost infinite 
variety in visible results lies the probability that, how- 
ever impulsive or intellectual or practical is the per- 
sonality that has emerged from the years immediately 
preceding, every young woman is working out a plan 
and a purpose in her life. This purpose may result 
in the adoption of a "cause," in a sordid devotion, to a 
narrow self-interest, in an unobtrusive devotion to 
ordinary duties, or in the formulation of a brilliant 
and original system of philosophy, but with what ma- 
terial and with what mind she has, the normal young 
woman will put her world into coherent shape. 

Relation of Thinking to its Unconscious Factors. One 
of the psychological dangers of this period is an uncon- 
scious omission from its universal scheme of many 
factors. Because they are habitual and automatic they 
have dropped out of conscious attention. These factors 
may be emotions, ideas, or activities. The mind ''set" 
which they so largely determine has great influence in 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 293 

the plans and conclusions of conscious thinking.^ 
There are some things that will always have a different 
value to the girl brought up in a tenement and to the 
one to whom beauty and refinement have always been 
a matter of course. Whether an ideal of "service" 
means "doing good to" some one who should thereupon 
show proper "gratitude," or whether it means coopera- 
tion with others who, while different, can enter into 
a give-and-take of mutual respect, depends on ideas 
absorbed so long ago their existence is forgotten. 

Also difficult to disentangle from the complex "objec- 
tive me" and to value in relation to the whole of 
things, are habits of activity. Many such habits have 
lately been receiving much attention from efficiency 
experts. It is possible for a man to "objectify" his 
muscular habits when it makes a difference in dollars 
per day how he holds his shovel. In close competition 
for speed, a telephone operator can pay attention to 
the extra inch of flourish with which she pulls her 
cords. Habits of dress and personal neatness, of man- 
ners and speech, of handling tools, can all become 
objects of purposeful attention when it is a matter of 
"holding a job" or "getting a raise"! Subtler even 
than all these are emotional habits due to unrecognized 
reflexes of sensation and reaction. 

TJnconscious Habits. It has already been noted that 
delicacy, of discrimination in all the senses increases 
markedly in early adolescence. Although somewhat 
blurred by the avalanche of inner stimuli at the crisis 
following puberty, this delicacy increases to a maxi- 

1 These unconscious influences were long ago described most picturesquely by 
Francis Bacon in his "idols" of the "tribe," of the "market place," of the "cave," 
and of the "theater" (Novum Organum, bk. i, Aphorisms xxxix, etc. Referred 
to in almost any textbook of logic, and quoted at length in Hibben's Logic, Induc- 
tive and Deductive, pp. 364ff.). 



294 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

mum in the years of late adolescence. Decline from 
this maximum is due to varying elements of exercise 
and neglect, of general vitality, and of overstrain of 
special sense-organs, but it rarely begins until well on 
into maturity. In general, it may be expected that 
during the years now under consideration a young 
woman has the most perfect sensitivity of all her sense- 
organs. This perfection of the visual sense is a long 
unsuspected cause of one habit of thought which has 
far-reaching consequences. 

1. Attention to Details. It has long been a matter 
of common, unscientific observation that one character- 
istic of the average woman is observation of detail 
rather than of large generalities. She "cannot see the 
forest for the trees," or is '^penny wise and pound 
foolish," or she remembers the rules and does not 
grasp the principles on which they depend. In the 
course of his fascinating experiments in the psychology 
of advertising, Dr. Strong came upon some facts which 
bear directly upon this feminine characteristic.^ In 
testing the appeal of certain soap advertisements,^'^ 
the investigator noted that "women had more and 
greater dislikes than men, and were surer of them, but 
could not tell why." Further experiment to determine 
the reason for this fact pointed to the probability that 
incongruities in the elements of the illustrations caused 
the attitude of dislike, although they were not con- 
sciously recognized. When this incongruity was 

2 An Interesting Sex Difference, Dr. E. K. Strong, Jr., American Journal of 
Psychology. 

» A number of men and women were asked to arrange the advertisements in a 
certain number of piles in the order of their convincingness. Those which would 
influence one neither for or against purchase of the article were to form a "zero 
pile," and those which would influence the person concerned to refrain from buying 
that particular brand were to be placed in a "minus pile." The average man 
placed none below "zero," and the average woman placed thirteen of the fifty 
advertisements in the "minus pile." 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 295 

pointed out it was accepted as the reason, but its 
recognition "neither added to nor detracted from their 
then present attitude of dislike." 

Following the clue thus obtained, Dr, Strong pro- 
ceeded to test the matter as follows : Twenty men and 
twenty women were each shown the same twenty-five 
advertisements from ordinary magazines, the experi- 
menter laying them in front of the individual at the 
rate of one per second. Twenty-five more advertise- 
ments were given to each subject to examine as long as 
he or she cared to. After this each subject was given 
a collection of portions cut from advertisements and 
told to sort them into four piles according to their 
sense of certainty that they had seen them before.^ 
Of the pieces from the illustrations shown at the rate 
of one per second the men recognized with certainty 
13.8 per cent, the women 20.8 per cent (or 51 per cent 
better than the men) ; of those examined at leisure 
the men recognized with the same degree of certainty 
27.1 per cent and the women 41.3 per cent (or 58 per 
cent better than the men). It is, therefore, a true 
statement of sex difference to say that under the same 
conditions women see 50 per cent more details than 
men. As a control to this, experiments were con- 
ducted^ which showed that ^^Advertisements are no- 



4 There were 291 of these pieces, 133 cut from the advertisements previously 
shown, and 158 new. The method was to sort these pieces into four piles, 100 per 
cent, or absolute certainty; 75 per cent, or strong certainty; 25 per cent, or 
thought not to have been seen before, and per cent, which was absolute cer- 
tainty that they had not been seen before. The mathematical process of com- 
puting the results is very intricate, but its accuracy makes the chances of the result 
being true for an unlimited number of men and women 993 to 7 for the first trial, 
and 998 to 2 for the second. 

6 First, twenty other men and twenty other women were shown 25 advertise- 
ments, 1 per second, and after these 25 were mixed with 25 which they had not 
seen, the subjects sorted them as before. With these whole advertisements the 
men recognized 74.8 per cent., the women 74.3 per cent., that is, equally well. 
Next, 300 men and women were handed a copy of the same number of a current 
magazine by some one not connected with the experimenter, and asked to read a 
certain article. Each had the copy of the magazine for a week, and nothing was 



296 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

ticed in daily life half as often and half as well by 
women as by men. With the same opportunity, men 
and women recognize advertisements as a whole equally 
well/' This is in interesting contrast with the fact 
just established that, on the other hand, ''with the 
same opportunity women correctly identify 50 per cent 
more details than men." 

These experiments were upon "average" men and 
women, selected at random. There is no record of their 
tastes and training, and, of course, it is impossible to 
say how much of this difference is innate and how 
much is due to training. But it is a real and signifi- 
cant difference between adult men and women of the 
present time. It is probably true that the average 
woman sees more details in any object presented to her 
than does the average man, and this is probably one 
reason for her frequent confusion in judgment. Main 
issues are clouded and confused by her involuntary 
photographing of details. But once knowing this fact, 
women can be trained to pick out the essentials and 
to attend to them and neglect non-essentials, while there 
is the advantage that any one of the involuntarily re- 
membered details may be useful for reference. 

2. Attention to Persons. Acting in conjunction with 
the tendency to notice details is another pretty well 
established sex-characteristic. The average woman 
instinctively notices and cares for persons rather than 
things. Suppose that a certain car in an automobile 
race were marked by an unusual placing of some of its 



said about the advertisements. The experiment was completed with 80 of the men 
and 137 of the women, who were asked to sort similarly 77 full-page advertise- 
ments taken from the magazine in question. The result of this was that the men 
recognized 9.4 per cent, and the women 4.1 per cent, of the whole number; while 
of the 25 of these same advertisements occupying the best position, the men 
recognized 11.2 per cent, and the women 5. per cent. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 297 

parts, and its driver wore a peculiar garb. If any one 
hundred men and one hundred women in the grandstand 
were asked to mention what they noticed about that 
car that attracted their attention, more than fifty per 
cent of the men would speak of the peculiarity in the 
machine, and more than fifty per cent of the women 
would speak of the driver's garb. This means that for 
a majority of women their associations of ideas are 
largely bound up with memories of the way persons 
act and react in the situations present or suggested. 

3. Association by Varied Imagery. The interest in per- 
sons and the consciousness of details is further modified 
by another factor, namely, the individual's mental 
imagery. This is of account in all mental and emo- 
tional processes of any age or sex, but the average 
person, unless he is a teacher or a psychologist, rarely 
stops to think of the machinery by which he remembers. 
When he is asked to report on the matter, however, he 
can usually tell with little difficulty whether the poem 
he learned in childhood still looks at him from the page 
of his Fourth Reader, or says itself in his own or the 
teacher's voice. He can say whether the word "dog," 
suddenly pronounced, brings up a mental "picture," 
more or less clear, or a sound-memory as of his own 
dog's bark of welcome. In fact, he may be ready to 
classify himself as belonging to a "visual type" or an 
"auditory type." 

The eye and the ear are the channel of most of the 
definitely taught facts of school instruction, and so 
visual and auditory images have been most talked 
about in teaching theories, and are more apt to be 
reckoned with in analyzing one's own mental processes. 
But there are also "tactile," "motile," "olfactory," 



298 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

"gustatory/^ and ''kinsesthetic" images.^ So little has 
been said of them in popular psychology that very few 
people are conscious of them. A college professor, an 
acute scientific observer in certain lines, was entirely 
unconscious of the existence of these types of imagery 
until made the subject of psychological experiment, 
although some of them proved in this case to be un- 
usually vivid and pervasive. It has been a current idea 
that an individual's imagery was predominantly of 
one "type." The visualist was supposed not to have 
vivid sound images, and vice versa. Experiment, how- 
ever, has shown conclusively that if a person has any 
one of these kinds of imagery in great intensity, the 
more, not less, vivid are the others apt to be. Some 
have weak images of every kind, even from childhood. 
"Abstract" images (like that of the tcord "dog," or just 
the "meaning" or "idea" of "dog") help one to think 
faster, and so images from sense associations tend in 
later life to drop out of use. Students, and those who 
deal with long trains of reasoning in science or philoso- 
phy or mechanics, are apt to use a sort of shorthand 
mental life which dispenses with images. But in those 



*• One may find that he remembers, more vividly than either sight or soiind, the 
feeling of the dog's rough tongue licking, or of the muzzle in his hand, or the wooUy 
pressure against his knee. These are "tactile" images. The memories of the 
feeling of effort in shutting the gate to keep the dog from following, or of the httle 
muscular creeps at the dog's caress are "kinsesthetic;" that is, images of sensations 
from one's own bodily reflexes. If the memory is of the way one's tongue and 
throat act to pronounce the word "dog," or the movement of the arm to pat its 
head, it is a "motile" image. Associated memories may bring the very smell of 
the pine woods through which the dog loved to hunt with you, or the taste of the 
venison you brought home together. These, of course, are "olfactory" and "gus- 
tatory" images, respectively. A little thought and "trying out" will show how 
closely motile imagery is related to making the motions in an incipient, shadowy 
sort of way, and thus to a kingesthetic memory which is almost a reexperiencing 
of sensations which are a large part of emotion itself. Kinassthetic and motor 
images are closely related, and more pervasive than we dream tiU we pay attention 
to them. Think of biting a lemon, and with the remembered taste will come a flow 
of saliva and puckering of the face. And if your auditory memory is good, recall 
the sound of a nail scratching on glass, and note the (kinsesthetic) memory images 
of "creepiness" in spine and skin, and "motile" images which become almost real 
movements to shut the ears or stop the tormentor. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 299 

who have sense-imagery at all, at this age it will be as 
keen as at any time in their lives. 

Resulting Interpretations. Now, put all these facts 
together. Because of her keen sense-perceptions and 
her interest in persons, the young woman sees every 
little detail in facial and bodily expression of the people 
about her. Her memories and associations of ideas are 
still using the medium of unblunted imagery of all 
kinds. Those perceptions and associations which start 
trains of tactile, motile, and kinsesthetic imagery trans- 
late themselves into incipient movements and feelings. 
These follow the line of personal interest in further 
associations of ideas, and thus quickly start or re- 
enforce real emotions. By the self-centered girl the 
subtle shades of expression on the faces about her are 
likely to be interpreted as having relation to herself. 
She sees the perfectly unconscious frown caused by 
a tooth-ache or a corn, and wonders why the sufferer 
is displeased with her! She is what is called '^sensi- 
tive," her "feelings are easily hurt," and she lives in 
emotional discomfort or torment. 

Some women have developed an uncanny genius for 
reading these unconscious expressions and interpreting 
them through their own imagery into terms of emo- 
tional cause. Unfortunately, their associations go on 
to attribute motives for these emotions which might, 
alas ! be probable in their own experience, but are quite 
foreign to the one observed. Thus their reports of these 
unconscious inventions become hurtful and malicious 
gossip. The near-sighted chairman asks if Mrs. A is 
in the room, and the pucker of her brows as she tries 
to see causes Mrs. B to say to her neighbor, "How she 
does allow herself to be annoyed by little delays !" The 



300 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

chairman of the reception committee at a church func- 
tion takes her chosen place at the foot of the receiving 
line. But the hours she has spent in hard work pre- 
paring refreshments and decorations have brought on 
severe suffering from an organic disease of whose exist- 
ence only a few intimate friends are aware. She talks 
animatedly with each guest, but in a lull the pain lines 
form unknown to her. And Mrs. C thereupon remarks 
confidentially to several women, "Did you notice how 
angry she w^as that she was placed at the foot of the 
line instead of next to the minister and his wife?" 

The healthy-minded girl, on the contrary, uses this 
power of translating other persons' motor expressions 
back into emotions paralleling their cause, to appre- 
ciate their feelings, not to wound them, nor to hurt her 
own. She calls upon a sick friend and while convers- 
ing on some topic remote from the sick room, quietly 
rearranges the pillows. 

"That is so much better!" murmurs the grateful 
invalid. "How did you know?" 

"You looked uncomfortable, and I knew this would 
feel better," is the girl's explanation of the unconscious 
working of her motile and tactile imagery. She sees 
the shade in the eyes of a friend after some too-blunt 
comment, and adds the equally frank appreciation that 
brings happiness again. It is recorded of a worker 
with girls and young women"^ that the secret of her 
power was an unusual sensitivity to the attitude of 
others. In her girlhood this had been a source of pain, 
but she resolutely set about developing it into a means 
of understanding others. 

While these mental characteristics, like all others, 

7 Memorial to Alice Jackson, edited by Robert Speer. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 301 

vary in individuals, they are to be accepted on the 
whole as feminine traits, and trained out of self-love 
into that exquisite sensitiveness of compassion which 
we call sympathy. 

Instinct and Emotion. While all the instincts have 
made their appearance in the preceding periods, these 
years see the waxing of some and the waning of others. 
The rate and force of these changes depend much on 
the stimulation afforded by the environment. Al- 
though economic, educational, and social differences 
may hasten or delay their appearance, normally the 
strongest instinctive interests of this period are race 
passion and personal ambition. With widening inter- 
ests an increasing number of men and women, of a 
much wider range of age, are included among those 
for whom she has that complex but distinct affection 
called friendship. Friendship is a large factor in 
determining the lines of ambition, and becomes a 
dominating motive in life plans. Maternal affection 
consciously enters into her attitude toward individuals 
and toward choice of work. The mating instinct is 
now fully differentiated, and it is time for the girl to 
be in love, not alone with love, but with a worthy lover. 

Emotion and Efficiency. Both love and ambition are 
sources of powerful emotion. But painstaking meas- 
urement of efficiency in activities varying from teleg- 
raphy and typewriting to writing poetry has shown 
that intense emotion of any kind is a hindrance to 
quantity and quality of performance. "Apart from 
the eager but quiet zest for the work itself and for 
success in it, all emotional excitement is distracting — 
not only violent love, grief, humiliation, and disgust, 
but also even moderate fear of onlookers, exultation 



302 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

at success, and anger at competitors or at oneself, are 
to some extent waste of energy and preventives of im- 
provement."^ While it has been customary to think 
that '^a violent feeling of hate, with idleness as its 
object, is supposed to make one form the habit of 
work, . . . the evidence seems to show . . . that we 
must distinguish the general set or attitude of a man 
. . . from the emotional excitement which often does 
but may not accompany the attitude. . . . The original 
correlations between the inner excitements of love, 
disgust, and the like, and the attitude of being satisfied 
and being annoyed may be altered so that either feature 
of the original behavior complex may exist without 
the other. A man may boil with rage at idleness while 
idly boiling with rage and being content to idly boil. 
A man may, per contra, be so annoyed by idleness as 
never to indulge in it and always try to cure it, with- 
out, in the traditional sense of the term, feeling rage 
or disgust or scorn or any other vehement inner pas- 
sion."^ . . . ''Those who achieve most and advance 
most rapidly, whether in mathematics, science, music, 
painting, self-control, or devotion, are, on the average, 
characterized by less inner turbulence than those of 
low performance and slow progress. Moreover, the 
same individual becomes, on the average, less excited 
in his work, the better he learns to work. . . . Both 
satisfyingness in general and success in particular are 
exciting. But being stimulated by working well is 
theoretically and practically a very, very different 
fact from working well because of emotional stimula- 
tion." 1^ 



8 Thorndike, Number 92, vol. ii, p. 226. 

9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., pp. 227-229. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 303 

Indeed, in so emotional a process as falling in love, 
it has been the testimony of many a woman that the 
tension and turbulence of passion accompanied what 
proved to be unsatisfying and evanescent relations, 
while the real and permanent affection was pre- 
eminently characterized by the calm and peace of the 
emotional attitude. 

Directing Emotional Power. The violence and absorb- 
ingness of emotions are dependent partly on tempera- 
ment and partly on habit. When from any cause an 
emotion arises, its presence is a stimulus whose energy 
must be released either in more emotion till exhaustion 
occurs, or in some form of activity. Which it shall be 
is a matter of habit, and habit can be determined by 
conscious choice. So determined also is the habit of 
not waiting for emotional stimulus ; '^trampling under 
foot," as John Wesley words it in the Methodist Disci- 
pline, "that enthusiastic doctrine that we are not to 
do good unless our hearts are free to it." Emotions 
which cannot be so directed are to be inhibited. There 
are but two ways to inhibit an emotional response, and 
both are ways of altering the stimulus, directly or in- 
directly. 

1. By Association of Ideas. In almost any situation 
which arouses an emotion it will be found by honest 
analysis that the "feeling" belongs to only part of 
the factors of the complex whole. Many a young 
business woman has looked forward to the unaccus- 
tomed housework of her approaching married life with 
but one apprehension — washing dishes. Very probably 
when she was a little girl she was left to do them all 
alone while the rest were in another room having a 
good time; and perhaps she was never taught how to 



304 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

keep her dishwater clean and hot and soapy. And so 
the idea of "doing dishes" is accompanied by a blur 
of images of loneliness, tears, cold, greasy dishwater, 
and sticky kettles. If she realizes this, it is perfectly 
possible for her to dissociate the idea of "doing dishes" 
from all these unpleasant memories by paying attention 
to the cheer of her own kitchen, its conveniences for 
speed, and, above all, the pretty dishes which are her 
"very own," until she feels the same childish delight 
as in the happy hours after the tasks were done, and 
she could go to her dolls and her playhouse. 

Unless the personality has been arrested in a low 
stage of development, the young woman seeks the 
approval of the world and of her friends and lover, not 
for the brilliancy or beauty or charm which depends on 
her bodily presence, but for the self which is expressed 
in work and measured by achievement. This, of course, 
presupposes that she has, on the one hand, a chance 
to do a real work and is not kept in the anomalous posi- 
tion of a mere ornament or parasite ; and, on the other 
hand, that the work which occupies her is one which 
can be made an expression of her personality instead 
of identifying her with a machine which she tends. 
But in acquiring skill in any work, be it gardening 
or nursing, keejDing house or teaching, no habit is more 
important than that of neglecting tendencies to be 
disturbed by annoyances, or comments, or by one's own 
failures. In work which demands skill in meeting peo- 
ple and tact in interesting "diflQcult" individuals (as, 
for example, in salesmanship) success depends upon an 
unruffled good humor which is spoiled as soon as per- 
sonal emotion is allowed to enter. Here is where direct- 
ing the attention is the only possible method. One can- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 805 

not often alter the "situation" by changing patients or 
customers or climate or children or superintendents; 
but one can alter the interest by studying the situation 
to see what changes it is capable of yielding to skillful 
handling; and one can alter the habitual associations 
of ideas. Does the saleswoman dread the advent of a 
certain customer? She may use her as "practice ma- 
terial" for the social diplomacy she will need in the 
home that is some day to be her own. Pollyanna and 
her "glad game" is an apt illustration of the possi- 
bilities of finding stimulating associations of ideas in 
"hopeless" situations. 

There is another stimulus which might be classed 
as an emotion, which is a normal experience of youth. 
It is the diffuse and all-embracing joy in being alive 
which accompanies exercise of any normal function 
when the body is in perfect condition. Whether "The 
Queen is in the kitchen, eating bread and honey," or 
"The maid is in the garden, hanging up the clothes," 
if the kitchen is cool and sweet and the bread and 
honey fresh and delicious, if the garden is sunny and 
the breezes bring the scent of flowers, and the arms 
that hang up the white clothes are strong and young, 
there is a joy worth celebrating by Mother Goose or 
any of the more pretentious immortals. This general 
satisfyingness often "holds over" by the laws of asso- 
ciation when other circumstances render the activity 
itself intrinsically less satisfying. Pleasure of this 
sort which has been especially acute in connection with 
some less usual activity may form an association which 
can be treasured for a lifetime. It is probable that 
many forms of amusement are to most middle-aged 
people symbols of past delight rather than the cause 



306 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of any actual pleasurable sensation in the present. 
This is a law which the educator can use to good 
advantage, by supplying pleasant associations for the 
less attractive social tasks. It makes a great difference 
in the worshipful attitude on Sunday whether the 
chapel has been cleaned by a poorly paid janitor, or 
by a '^bee" of the young men's and young women's 
Sunday school classes. 

8. By Actually Changing the Situation. These facts 
enter into the psychology of efficiency in two ways: 
Health and pleasurable companionship are elements 
of success in much necessary work that under dreary 
or hateful conditions would be only drudgery, poorly 
done at great cost of effort. With a clear knowledge 
of this fact, it may be possible to supply the requisites 
for happy efficiency. Or a task may be irksome only 
because bodily weakness makes any effort painful. 
Oftentimes there are two distinct sets of habitual re- 
sponses fram an individual to a given situation. 
Whether these responses are gayety, patience, or cheer- 
ful silence; or tears, temper, sarcasm, nagging, or a 
silence unbearably exasperating, often depends on one's 
physical fitness. A certain degree of fatigue or tension 
may "switch over" the response from one set of "paths" 
to the other. When once the danger point of fatigue 
is reached the undesirable responses may be entirely 
beyond the individual's control. In such a case dis- 
cretion is the better part of valor, and one's moral 
responsibility is to learn the danger signals on the safe 
side of the line, and heed them every time. Self-control 
will be more certain of results if exercised in refusing 
to do the nerve-racking extra service, or in going to 
bed instead of to the concert, rather than in heroic 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 307 

efforts to keep the voice steady and the words civil 
when the nerves are overtired. 

When efficiency is lowered young women need to 
learn to analyze conditions and seek the remedy either 
in increased physical vigor^ or in an actual change of 
the conditions under which the work is done. Perhaps 
more often than not the unfavorable conditions are due 
to the "persons who are the situation." If criticism, 
ill humor, or distaste for work or workers are in danger 
of becoming chronic or epidemic, the remedy is in 
initiating a new contagion. This change is to be 
effected by furnishing a stimulus which will change 
the response of the environing persons. Here too suc- 
cess is easier if the "bacillus" of good spirits has 
plenty of physical vitality. 

SUMMARY 

/ Later adolescence is thus seen to be characterized by 
not less of emotion but by more of intellectual control 
of emotions. There is an "original satisfyingness" in 
thinking out questions of personal and universal rela- 
tions, and fitting all the knowledge acquired into a 
coherent whole. This whole usually includes a purpose 
for the individual life, and definite plans for carrying 
out that purpose. There are motor, emotional, and 
idea factors in each personality which have already 
become so habitual that they may fail to be recognized 
and receive their proper place in the conscious plans 
and purposes. Young women need especially to know 
the strength and weakness inherent in the feminine 
mental characteristics of visual sensitiveness to detail, 
imagery which tends to arouse and increase emotions. 



308 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

and a tendency to interpret facts in terms of personal 
relation. It is on the recognition and shaping of these 
habit elements in accordance with the life purpose that 
much of success and efficiency depend. Such habit 
formation, although more difficult than in childhood, 
is still possible to an extent which will diminish in 
succeeding years, while difficulties due to already les- 
sened plasticity of the brain stuff are largely balanced 
by the strength of the motives of ambition, friendship, 
and love. 

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, 
Numbers 10, 43, 44, 48, 52, 55, 57, 58, 76, 79, 94, 98, 134, 
135, 143, 144. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF PREPARA- 
TION FOR ADULT LIFE 

In early adolescence it was Indispensable for the 
development of character that self should be con- 
sciously affirmed. In the crisis the issue was what 
ideal of character the self should choose. The business 
of this later organization period is a purposed plan, 
a '^mission." Physical and mental growth have per- 
fected the individual equipment and imparted a bound- 
less store of energy. Experience has given a rich back- 
ground of ideas and awakened the desire for more. 
The young woman is ready to cooperate in building 
her own character with an intelligence and purpose 
impossible heretofore. 

The Problem of Placing the Life. That is the way 
the philosophical adult friend can look at it. The 
young woman, emerging from high school or college, 
making her debut in society, or looking eagerly over 
her typewriter desk, her sales counter, or her power 
machine, answers the great pulsing life of the world 
with her own throbbing pulses. Its need and suffering 
and stupendous tasks call to her conscious power of 
love and pity, of sacrifice and hard work. She is no 
child with fragmentary knowledge and naive hopes, 
no ^^mere young girl" with romantic dreams and ideals 
innocent of reality. She is a woman, ready to do her 
share, to give her fresh young strength, to live and 
suffer and enjoy, to "get into the game" and take first- 



310 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

hand experience of the world of her hopes and desires. 
But she is a very young woman. Do not tell her so ! 
Nothing is more irritating than advice except patroniz- 
ing advice, and the very consciousness of youth and 
inexperience make the reiteration of it unbearable. 
Yet back of all the brave assurance that she can be 
and do and give what is of worth to the world is the 
wistful, tremulous need to know what the world most 
vitally needs, and what she can most perfectly do. So 
many things are still possible, but the necessity of 
choice is urgent. 

Its Demand for Immediate Answer. When she was a 
child the girl looked forward to herself as a "milliner 
or a musicker," a sculptor, or a teacher, or the mother 
of ten children; perhaps all in the same day; perhaps 
one ideal persisted for a long time. But the fulfillment 
was an immeasurable distance away. With the en- 
trance to her teens came the joyous realization that 
young-ladyhood was within a definite and comprehensi- 
ble number of years, and for a time the plans for her 
personal activities in that limitless period bounded 
her thoughts. A few years of growth and study wid- 
ened her ideals till their concrete boundaries dissolved 
in the vagueness of the abstract and universal. She 
was to be the super-woman, whose special talents in 
literature, art, and music should astonish and enrich 
the world, whose clear-sighted and efficient administra- 
tive ability should organize an admiring and loyal band 
of social workers to abolish poverty and misery, and 
who yet should make all these things mere adjuncts 
to a most perfect home with an adoring and distin- 
guished husband and perfectly educated wonder-chil- 
dren. Just how and when this would come to pass was 



PEOBLEMS OF PEEPARATION 311 

not clear, but there was plenty of time.^ Now each 
day brings a question that must be answered. Can 
she get a job of any kind ? Will the world, not admire 
and applaud, but pay her ten dollars a week? When 
one third of the hands are to be laid off, will she have 
^^made good'^ suflacienlly to be kept on? Will she 
marry Jack — ^honest, freckled, good-humored, and hard- 
working, but not knowing a Beethoven sonata from a 
Burne- Jones etching? Will she accept the sacrifice of 
the family and go to college, or learn the trade in which 
she has shown promise and help carry the family 
burdens? 

The disconcerting part of it all is that the choices 
are so few, and yet so complicated in their results — 
and that nothing will wait. She has a feeling of the 
same breathless anxiety with which she watched the 
two skipping ropes turned by two other little girls. 
If she made her first jump at exactly the right instant 
and calculated the time that they writhed above her 
head so that her feet rose as they fell, she got into 
the rhythm and felt the intoxication of success. A slip 
meant tangled feet and perhaps a fall, surely a jeer, 
and the loss of her "turn." But there was always a 
chance to try again, to practice until she was sure 
of success. It seems now as she watches the interlacing 
ropes of industrial and social life that it is the merest 
chance that she shall not "get in wrong" ; and that so 
many are waiting their turn that one miss is irrevoca- 
ble. Yet she knows that self-pity or despair will be as 
fatal now as was letting herself listen to her rival's 
paralyzing taunt of "You can't do it, you can't, you 
can't!" Again the grim "I'll show you!" nerves her 

1 Number 48 is a sympathetic sketch of this process. 



312 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

to win. But will all the unselfish eagerness to serve 
be crushed out in winning a place from which to serve? 

The Clue to the Answer. The relentless immediacy 
with which the world presents its choices for her an- 
swer extends to all the interests of her life. Her work, 
her pleasures, her friends, her duty, and that Future 
of possessions and fame and service and heart happi- 
ness which must be, and which yet is determined by 
the far-reaching choices of to-day, all press in an in- 
tolerable confusion; they form a maze to which she 
must find the clue. That clue is in some comprehen- 
sive life purpose. By it all things may be judged 
as to their utility, and rejected, or placed according to 
their relative worth. What is to determine the plan? 
What are its essential factors ? Is there, after all, law 
and order which can organize the chaos of life into 
beauty, symmetry, and success? Where is she to go 
for the knowledge and help which she must find or fail? 
Much of the knowledge, it is true, must and can come 
only from experience; but much of it is more valuable 
in vicarious form, for personal experience would leave 
no life to use it. Here, then, is where the older man 
or woman — parent, friend, teacher, trade-master, spe- 
cial authority — has place as a helper. Not direction but 
cooperation is the method, not oracle but testimony. 

1. Individual Aptitude. All who would help efiCectively 
must have a foundation conviction of the unique and 
permanent value of personality. Even in our mechani- 
cal age, when our school systems seek to standardize 
the knowledge and the skill of boys and girls by a 
uniform grading, and when the products of industry 
bear the immediate impress of machine regularity, it 
is still patent that there are round and square pegs 



PKOBLEMS OF PREPARATION 313 

among the youthful workers, and round and square 
holes in the machinery. The new science of industrial 
efficiency is an attempt at a rudimentary sorting of at 
least the predominating angles and curves of worker 
and job. The religious educator believes that in a 
human world every human being has a possible place 
for perfect development which will contribute some- 
thing needed for the perfect development of humanity, 
as a whole. But the fitting of the individual to that 
unique place comes not by a blind trust in Providence. 
Somebody has to know the various shaped places and 
assort the individual material. Educator, social 
worker, industrial leader — all must cooperate. But 
just now we have to consider the part in this fitting 
process which must be taken by the individual con- 
cerned. ^ 

A great man said in the friendly intimacy of an 
alumni reunion that "Success is doing the thing you'd 
rather do than anything else in the world, and getting 
well paid for it." Personal inclination is not the only 
criterion of fitness, but it is an important factor. 
Whatever work any individual in the world can do 
must be done with materials and forces existent in the 
world. There are great divisions in the occupational 
field made by the "three kingdoms, animal, vegetable, 
and mineral." One may raise things that grow out 
of the earth — agriculture, horticulture, floriculture; or 
one may raise and train animals — dairying, bees, 
horses, dogs, poultry, pets ; or one may manipulate the 
more permanent materials of the earth itself — ^in pot- 
tery, gold and silver and jewel craft, and wrought 
metals. Closely allied to this last comes another great 

« See Bibliography, Number 126. 



314 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

division, namely, manufacturing and handcrafts. This 
passes almost imperceptibly to the arts on the one 
hand, and to "trade and transportation" on the other. 
Both of these are intertwined with the great variety of 
work which has to do more with persons than with 
things, from "domestic and personal service" to the 
professions of nursing, healing, teaching, writing, gov- 
erning, and home-making. By the time society has 
a right to ask the girl to choose the place for which 
she will fit herself she should have a wide enough 
acquaintance with these fundamental materials and 
processes to know at least the field of her natural pref- 
erence. It is probable that no human being exists 
without a peculiar "leap of spirit" to some particular 
age or condition of persons, to some kind of materials, 
to some mental or manual process, and to being more 
or less in the presence of others while working. This 
complete "satisfyingness to the organism" may be 
found in the presence of little children or little chick- 
ens, the sick, the aged, or incorrigible small boys; or 
it may be produced by intricate machinery, fine needle- 
work, chemicals, a microscope, a color box, hat trim- 
mings, figures and sales; or by a well-ordered house, 
or while organizing one's classmates to clean the school- 
yard or to out-"root" the neighboring school team. 
Wherever this sense of well-being and absorbing in- 
terest is felt there is a guidepost to success. 

2. Knowledge of Possibilities. Why are so many 
women so manifestly in the wrong place? The girl 
who could make a score of homesick and dyspeptic 
boarders well-fed and happy exasperates the business 
man with her erratic spelling while she bruises her 
spirit pounding the typewriter keys. One whose fingers 



PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION 315 

are deft with needle and thread, and who has the in- 
stinct for color and line which could transform the 
dowdy genius into the smartly dressed and successful 
looking woman, paints wooden portraits and night- 
mare landscapes. The girl who fills the windows of 
even an apartment bedroom with blooming plants 
wearily imparts arithmetic to small boys whose only 
appreciation of her efforts is to call her the "cross 
teacher." The fault may be that of society, in having 
pushed her into the wrong niche. One of the tragedies 
of too early entrance upon gainful occupation is that 
the young girl has no chance to know what she can do 
best, for she does not know of the existence of many 
possible kinds of work. Even the girl who has been 
able to postpone her choice of work until her later 
teens may repeat the tragedy. In the long corridor 
of opportunities, when she enters one door the others 
close — often with spring locks. It behooves her to 
consider before she enters the first one that opens. But 
it certainly seems axiomatic to say that the first essen- 
tial in placing a life effectively is to know what there 
is to do, as well as what it can do. It is sadly certain 
that the factory wheels have ground the poetry from 
the heart of more than one "mute, inglorious Milton" 
or Elizabeth Barrett, and that many Mary Antins have 
lacked the worshiping family to give them the one 
chance.^ 

3. Conviction and Persistence. Almost as frequently, 
however, the misfits are caused by inertia. The great 



3 Such stories as those of James Oppenheim and Mjrra Kelley have made these 
wastes of precious soiil-stuff real to us. Perhaps no one has pleaded the cause of 
universal opportunity more eloquently than the philosopher and sociologist, Lester 
F. Ward. One seems always to hear underneath his scientific arguments the 
passionate consciousness that to himseK came close the peril of hiding one of the 
greatest thinkers of the world in silence on a prairie farm. 



316 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

stimulus to perseverance in preparation for a true 
lifework is the girl's own conviction that God made 
her for something, and that it is her duty to find and 
do that and nothing else. The only known means of 
finding anything is looking for it. Finding one's voca- 
tion is no exception. Far too many women are in the 
places they now fill because they have rolled down the 
path of least resistance. Women of initiative, of 
genius, have broken paths into occupations, have hewed 
out the tools, and learned how to use them. After that 
an ordinary woman could follow, with increasing ease 
as the paths became thoroughfares, and as the ^^tools" 
were made in quantity. A profession has been chosen 
because it was the spectacular way to prove the posses- 
sion of brains, or because it was highly respectable, 
and in it one need not lose social position. Or a circu- 
lar given to the girls in the eighth grade has "guar- 
anteed" a salary of fifteen dollars a week after six 
months in the advertised business college, and her 
parents have felt it a much more "genteel" occupation 
than factory or housework. There has been no real 
search for the work that most needs doing, no honest 
recognition of the inner impulse, no trial efforts by 
which the judgment of others could be gotten on the 
product of the efforts. One who takes her life as an 
immortal thing should feel the duty and exercise the 
privilege of applying at least these three elementary 
criteria before "settling down" into the daily occupa- 
tion of that life. 

The Problem of Permanent Satisfyingness. The imper- 
ative need of vision is no less in the other vital func- 
tions of life — duty, friendship, recreation, service; or, 
to borrow the caption of that stimulating book, "Work, 



PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION 317 

play, love, and worship/' The immediacy of the differ- 
ent claims is real, but it must not obscure the fact 
that life does not stop at thirty, or even at forty! 
Besides the tragedy of planning a life without consider- 
ing enough possibilities, is the tragedy of choosing an 
ideal that will be finished too soon. Especially with 
women is this failure pitifully frequent. The woman 
who chooses the home as her lifework, often at fifty 
faces the world a widow, her children married and 
sufficient unto themselves, with money enough to live 
comfortably, perhaps, but with a social position that 
would make daily labor require more heroism than 
she possesses, and no interest big enough or skill suffi- 
cient to keep her from the consciousness of her useless- 
ness. It was a woman who had climbed the rugged 
path to fame who bemoaned the emptiness of it all. 

"Isn't your work famous^ and aren't you well paid ?" 
asked a friend. 

Dyspepsia and innate humor produced the whimsical 
pessimism of the rejoinder: "Yes, but all I really get 
out of it is my board and clothes — and my food doesn't 
agree with me and my clothes don't fit I" 

Another, whose modest success had been won in the 
struggle to earn comforts for a crippled mother, after 
the mother's death said : "I'm not morbid nor pessimis- 
tic, and I intend to do everything I see to do^ and to 
have real cheer about it; but nothing would make me 
happier than to die. There is no one who needs me, 
and / need to he needed/' 

Answered by Meeting Permanent Needs. Here is the 
clue the girl is seeking. She must so plan her life that 
it will always bring her in contact with work and with 
people which have real need of her. She has no power 



318 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of seeing future events, but there are great elemental 
principles by wbich. she may mold her life to meet the 
unpredictable details with poise and sufficiency. The 
world will always have to have shelter, food, clothing, 
and healing, to meet the physical needs of the living 
generation. Real skill in meeting any part of these 
fundamental physical demands — not some ephemeral or 
luxurious form of them — need never go without em- 
ployment and remuneration. Also, there will always 
be men, women, little children, and growing youth, 
with spiritual needs to be understood, and with love 
and gratitude to return for their satisfaction. Every 
normal human being has the power of muscle and brain 
to acquire ability in meeting at least one material need, 
and the sense and sympathy to understand and help at 
least some one age and condition in its immaterial 
desires. 

That every human being is unique does not mean that 
there will not be need for a great many of them to be 
doing the same kind of things for a large part of their 
time. In the high freedom of soul to serve, the com- 
monest task may be accepted, because the fact that 
it meets one of the most universal needs is what makes 
it common. That which delivers it from drudgery is 
creative imagination which can see its spiritual setting. 
It is much easier for the wife or daughter at home to 
plan three meals a day if she remembers that to the 
end of time human beings must get their energy from 
food, and directly or indirectly, providing that food 
is a universal task, shared with God himself. "Give us 
this day our daily bread'' involves cooperation with 
Him of whom Jesus said : "My Father worketh hither- 
to, and I work." The higher human needs, too, are 



PEOBLEMS OF PREPARATION 319 

fundamentally few. Justice, liberty, knowledge, truth, 
sympathetic understanding, wisdom, goodness, beauty, 
and affection — with these the differing externals of 
time and place have made no difference. Individuals 
can never achieve them alone, and those who can help 
others in the common struggle will never find them- 
selves "not needed." 

The Problem of Immediate Necessity. To many a girl 
the problem of these years is complicated in still more 
difficult fashion. She may know what she longs to 
do, and what others have testified that she gives great 
promise of doing, but the path to it may seem abso- 
lutely walled. There is just so much (or little) money 
that the family can spare from necessities; there are 
one, two, a half dozen other children, each with talents 
that will cost much to perfect. Shall hers or theirs go 
undeveloped? Or she may be the only one who can 
earn the actual necessities of life, and there is no time 
to wait for the larger service she might have given 
if things had been different. Things are not different, 
and she must meet her life as it is, not as it so easily 
might otherwise have been. Unable to do the thing 
she could in time do supremely well, what shall she 
do now? Help to clear thinking is never more needed 
or more welcome than in such problems. 

Hope Deferred, Not Thwarted. Two principles must 
not be blurred. The real value is the quality of the 
life, not the means by which it is developed. And 
more can be accomplished after maturity has begun 
than adolescence is wont to imagine. A graduate stu- 
dent in a great university, who had wide acquaintance 
with the students in various professional schools, said 
that many of the men he knew had changed their 



320 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

entire plan of life after reaching twenty-five. Some 
who had become successful business men by the errand- 
boy path, had after that age taken preparatory and 
college training and were now nearly ready for medi- 
cine or teaching or law or engineering or ministry. A 
young woman who went into an office after leaving 
high school stayed till her brothers and sisters went 
through high school and secured good positions or mar- 
ried. Then she quietly borrowed the money, went to 
college, graduated, and became a highly successful 
worker in her profession. Another who had majored 
in mathematics, and perhaps through emulation, or 
pride in her unusual facility, found a university posi- 
tion where she did the abstruse calculations for the 
observatory, years later took up home economics and 
became the head of a department which brought her 
'^in touch with living girls and future homes." 

Delays are to be avoided if possible, but they are 
not irremediable, and in the course of the delay ma- 
terial for future use may be accumulated. If the 
pattern of the life is determined, almost any material 
may be used to fashion it. A very small girl preferred 
making hats for her doll to any other occupation. 
After a Christmas dinner away from home she was 
quiet for a long time. Finally she appeared triumph- 
antly exhibiting a turban made of the turned-up half 
of an orange peel, with the other half cut into ribbon 
and looped in place with a polished slender splint bone 
from the leg of the turkey. The materials were un- 
usual, but the style was undeniable. It is part of the 
zest of life to see possibilities in unlikely or forbidding 
situations, and such vision can be made a habit. 

The Problem of Duty. In these years the responsi- 



PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION 321 

bility of growing up is almost oppressive. Every 
decision the young woman has to make is seen to affect 
those she loves as well as herself. Her relation to her 
family is becoming more and more that of an equal, 
and it is gratifying but at the same time a little bit 
disconcerting to realize that she must make final de- 
cisions for her; elf . Her obligations to herself, her 
family, and the world at large, to the present and the 
future, are factors that enter into every successive 
problem of duty. Right resolution depends on general 
principles which are matters of information. The re- 
sponsibility for her having that information and being 
accustomed to formulate for herself the principles is 
one which belongs to society in general and educators 
in particular. She should know that it is perfectly 
possible for her to gain the whole world and lose her 
own soul ; but she should also know that it is perfectly 
possible to be "unselfish" in a way which will help 
lose some other person's soul and not develop her own. 
Her very eagerness to be "doing the real work of the 
world" may shorten the preparation necessary to do 
her real work in the world. All that can be done to 
help is to be sure that she has all the facts, and does 
not decide until the evidence is all in ; and that when 
the evidence is in, she decides and acts. In the nice 
decision as to which principle applies in a particular 
situation, the responsibility, like the problem, must 
ultimately be her own. 

Problems of Leadership: 1. Friendship. Another 
accompaniment of growing up is an embarrassingly in- 
creased sphere of influence. Friendships of the earlier 
years undergo much sorting and sifting under the pres- 
sure of days full of work, or the strain of absence and 



322 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

differing interests. New associates in work or college 
or travel make increasing demands of acquaintance- 
ship, and from them come some of the friends who last 
through life. Old and new, these friends form a kind 
of bank account of the wealth of life, yielding large 
dividends of happiness, but also demanding securities. 
There are men and women, or youths and maidens of 
her own age, with whom she notes with secret delight 
and perhaps dismay that she is a leader, or that her 
judgment is given weight, or her favor sought. She 
is beginning to feel the lighter edge of the burden and 
the joy of being one of "the present generation." The 
ardor and idealism of her earlier adoring hero worship 
was not so satisfying as the comradeship of these 
deeper, more equal friendships. Much of her per- 
manent happiness will depend on learning what is 
essential in the give-and-take, the sincerity and faith 
of friendship in its most satisfying forms; on her 
learning what not to exact from her friends; and on 
her readiness to pay, in time and care, for the preserva- 
tion of a thing so precious. 

2. The Younger Set. But besides those abreast of her 
or in advance of her, she may suddenly realize that 
there are younger followers. It may or may not be a 
welcome discovery; it may be taken seriously or as 
an amusing trifle; but the young woman is now old 
enough to be herself an adoree ! Some quiet mouse or 
harum-scarum tomboy is copying in all faithfulness 
her dress, her slang, or her extravagance, her personal 
habits, and her ambitions and ideals. Not every young 
woman has this problem. Many who are earnest 
and good bemoan their lack of influence with the 
younger set. Many to whom its responsibility is an 



PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION 323 

annoyance are followed by a motley throng of adorers. 
What makes the difference? One who would be a 
leader must do something that girls can do. At the age 
when there must be "something doing" there must be 
somebody doing things, and that somebody is bound to 
be the center. There is no work of the educator which 
bears fruit so many fold as helping the "bom leader" 
to develop her younger followers, or stimulating a pas- 
sive, indifferent girl into capable leadership. 

This question of leadership or popularity is not 
merely one of personal gratification. It is also a test 
of efficiency in personal relations. The ordinary girl's 
popularity is permanent only when built on kindness, 
justice, and integrity; and it may be taken as a meas- 
ure of her success in thinking of others and making 
them happy. She must have a certain degree of success 
in this if she is to succeed in anything which involves 
working with people. There is an occasional girl with 
gifts of beauty, wit, and charm, who may use them 
selfishly and meanly, and still, through the fascination 
of her immediate presence, be forgiven much. Such 
a girl must be helped or compelled to see that this 
power over others is a gift whose selfish use works 
harm to others and also to herself, while all the pleas- 
ure the gift can yield belongs to the world which makes 
its development possible. 

Problems of Love. All the problems of work and 
friendship and leadership, of duty and efficiency, are 
given their significance by the real business of the 
race with the young woman at this age — ^her marriage. 
To this conviction all the novelists and poets, all the 
philosophers and sociologists testify. 

1. Its Place in the Life Plan. Race passion and indi- 



324 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

vidual ambition are both at the height of their power. 
Unless the young woman's goal of life is high enough 
to demand them both, she is apt to be torn between 
them as between wild horses. Shall she follow the 
career opened by her unusual talent, or shall she 
"sacrifice" it to the man she loves and the children to 
whom she may bequeath it? Shall she forego the home 
of her own to stay with the parents who are lonely , or 
to supplement the inadequate homelife of the poor and 
ignorant, in "social work" ? Her character as a woman 
depends on her "consecration of the affections," and 
this is a matter of religious and moral principle. Only 
religion and moral principle can steady her life when 
by circumstances which come to many a woman the 
object of either the race passion or the personal ambi- 
tion is torn out of it. The torrents of seemingly futile 
emotion must be stemmed, and used as motor power 
for service. The plan of life must be great enough to 
make more than one form of its expression possible, 
and thus save her from the hypochondria, apathy, fads, 
or empty dreariness which are the only other possible 
forms of existence. 

2. Social Eesponsibility. For efficiency in marriage 
and motherhood certain knowledge is needed.^ Those 
who are best able to help a young woman are men and 
women with the wisdom of experience, and the rare 
ability to refrain from making her judgments for her. 
Here there is no help like a wise mothers. The girl 
who has not a wise mother should have access to the 
heart of some other wise and unselfish married woman. 
For the sake of her entire future and that of the chil- 
dren she will teach or rear, every girl should have 

*See BibUography, Numbers 96, 97, 102, 108, 109, 110, 111, 116. 



PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION 325 

adequate knowledge of the essential facts of heredity 
and of social pathology. If she knows, in the imper- 
sonal, universal way that one learns scientific facts, 
the laws governing the transmission of insanity and 
feeble-mindedness, and the fiendish blasting of unborn 
lives entailed by every "sowing of wild oats," her 
acquaintances and intimacies will be guided without 
the willful prejudice of any ^^argumentum ad hom- 
inem.'^ And heartaches will be saved if knowledge 
comes before affections are given. 

There are those whose unwelcomed or unconsidered 
lives are the product of forces which must not be 
allowed to handicap future generations. If the girl 
has the burden of a heredity tainted with transmissible 
mental or physical disease, or loves a man who has 
such a burden, she must be helped to see that these 
forces may be made to work out a gift to the world in 
her own life. It is such strong souls that make of 
themselves "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake"^ 
who prove, in the advancement of the whole world's 
standard of righteous living, the ancient ^'Thus saith 
the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and 
choose the things that please me, and take hold of my 
covenant ; even unto them will I give in mine house and 
within my walls a place and a name better than of 
sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting 
name, that shall not be cut off."^ 

3. The Will to Efficiency. In marriage as well as in 
its renunciation, will is needed as well as knowledge. 
The instincts of wifely affection and comradeship, of 
motherhood, and of domesticity are quite distinct, both 
in the form of their responses, and in the situations 

6 Matt. 19. 12. 8 isa. 56. 4, 5. 



326 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

which call them forth. Often, perhaps usually, they 
are closely correlated. Perhaps oftener than custom 
has allowed for, a high degree of one exists with a 
much lower degree or entire absence of the others. A 
young woman should know where she is weakest in 
this trinity on which the successful home depends, and 
supplement instinct by training. Even the strongest 
maternal instinct will not know without instruction 
what to do for a sick baby; affection without intelli- 
gence may kill it. Unless the fundamentals of child 
training are intelligently acquired, the character of 
the loved but "spoiled" child may have almost ineradi- 
cable handicaps of habit before school brings to him 
the help of a trained teacher. The most tender affection 
and spiritual understanding between husband and wife 
will not entirely atone for dirt and untidiness in the 
housekeeping, or for ill-cooked and unpunctual meals. 
If the wife's affection is real, she will master the science 
of home making, whether or not she can hire its tasks 
performed by others. 

4. The Unshakable Foundations. The business of seri- 
ous courtship, accordingly, must be the finding out in 
each other of the things that shall hold two young 
people together for life. Have they interests enough 
in common to hold over after the waning of the stimuli 
and responses which arise only at the mating period? 
Interests are always founded on instincts, and the 
underlying instinct which founds marriage is that of 
parenthood. The display and answering emotion of 
a passionate kind will suddenly or gradually cease as 
the business of maintaining work and home presses 
hard. But if the home is founded as a unit of society, 
to contribute well-trained children to the community, 



PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION 327 

the birth and growth of those children will furnish 
continuous stimulus to mutual interests. Founding 
a home on such a common interest presupposes a free 
and reverent discussion of it. Can there be real unity 
in carrying out their common interest? Then there 
must be a common standard of ethics, ability to see 
beauty in the same things — (at least after it is pointed 
out) — and an unselfish good will. Not to be compared 
to artificial love-making is the determination to make 
each other have a good time, and to trust and be trust- 
worthy to the uttermost. The deeper and higher the 
interests in which there is unity of understanding and 
ideal, the more safely may happiness be risked when 
the range of lesser interests does not entirely coincide. 
If both put love to God and service to man in the center 
of their attention and effort, one may bear with the 
other's lack of humor, and the other reciprocate by 
going uncomplainingly to a symphony concert or serv- 
ing sauerkraut, as the case may be. Selfishness is the 
only invincible foe to happiness. 

SUMMARY 

This period is crowded, potent, dynamic. In it 
decisions must be made which affect the whole life of 
the woman, and her whole contribution to society. The 
best of knowledge and the fruit of ripest experience 
should be available to her as she chooses her friends, 
her work, and her lover, and home. For success in per- 
sonal happiness and in unselfish service, all her de- 
cisions must be made in relation to a plan large 
enough to cover her whole life, both in its undeveloped 
possibilities and in extent of time, and in accordance 
with eternal principles of duty and efficiency. 



CHAPTER XIX 
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS AND METHODS 

The girl'S problems in her years of maturing are 
those of duty and efficiency. Her solution of them will 
be satisfactory as she succeeds in meeting, according 
to various accepted tests, the standards which herself 
and society have set for her. The educator's problems 
are those involved in seeing that she is acquainted with 
the highest standards, and that she has the knowledge 
of herself and of conditions which will make it possible 
for her to meet the tests. The educator's part is that 
of supplying information and sympathetic understand- 
ing. In the relations between girl and educator friend- 
ship is the motive and cooperation the method which 
alone are effective. 

Social Factors Which Make the Present Educational 
Problem Unique. While the instinctive development in 
the last years of adolescence is fundamentally the same 
in all times and all nations, the stimuli which act upon 
these instincts vary from generation to generation. 
The difference is in the sum total of the previous ex- 
perience and training of the individual, and in the 
demands and ideals of the society by which she is 
surrounded. In these ways young womanhood in every 
quarter of the globe is different in this decade from 
young womanhood at any other time in history. It 
is characteristic of this stage of mental development 
to think, to theorize and philosophize, and to seek for 
unity between thought and action. There have been 

328 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 329 

times when all thinking was a forbidden delight, and 
there have been times when thinking was fully occupied 
in mastering the intricate mazes of accepted philosophy 
or theology ; but there never has been a time when the 
average, the commonplace young girl was so free to 
think, and when there were so many accessible "facts 
to think with." The ordinary girl may have been as 
free from conventional limitations in the subjects of 
her speech in Shakespeare's England; the privileged 
young woman of the French salons during the Enlight- 
enment may have been more ostentatiously destructive 
in the form of her theories ; but the girl of to-day thinks 
and questions over a wider range, and will accept, as 
past perad venture, less from the thought of others. 
She is thus in danger of superficiality or cynicism. Her 
accepted standards are changed by her removal to 
another locality, or her promotion to another social 
or economic status. She is apt to see only externals. 

While few young women have any idea of the signifi- 
cance of the term "pragmatism" — and the professed 
leaders of that philosophical movement do not produce 
the impression of an intelligible agreement among 
themselves — this generation has absorbed at every pore 
the conviction that everything is to be tested by its 
results. Because many of the things she has been 
taught, in her experience and observation do not work, 
she brands them all as untrue. Many a girl, who is 
in the mind of her elders still a romantic and dreamy 
idealist, has already, with regret or contempt as the 
case may be, but quite calmly and thoroughly, thrown 
away the convictions and ideals which lie at the base 
of the principles by which those elders are exhorting 
her to order her life. Among the fundamentals whose 



330 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

worth the thinking young woman of to-day questions 
articulately, and the vast army of average young 
women question practically if mutely, are those of 
the monogamic family; of home as the basis of ideal 
living; of all previous conceptions of womanliness; of 
the practicality and even the desirability of human 
brotherhood; of the permanence of human personality, 
and the existence of divine personality. 

Unchanging Elements for Developing Standards. But 
the psychological make-up of the girl has not radically 
changed. She is still an idealist, passionately so ; and 
she is still a hero-worshiper and an altruist. Her 
iconoclasm is not caused by the pleasure of seeing the 
idols smash, but by her conviction that it is part of 
efficiency to discard and sweep upon the scrapheap 
everything that is not directly usable. If she can be 
given proof that the principles and convictions slowly 
won through the centuries are useful, indispensable, 
as a basis for further progress, no one will be more 
sturdily conservative than she. She can be made to 
see that it is as wasteful for her to attempt to work 
out her life-problems without reference to what has 
already been done by the great ' 'masters in the kingdom 
of life" as for an astronomer or a civil engineer to insist 
on making his own tables of logarithms, or for the 
cashier to count up on her fingers instead of using the 
multiplication table. 

And there is always the appeal to youth of a mighty 
faith. Unassailable facts are but one contribution we 
may make to the needs of our younger friends. Often 
their greatest need is for the fact of our own faith ; the 
conviction that some things that are not, yet, are to 
us of such supreme worth that our lives are going into 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 331 

making them come true. There are great truths which 
it takes centuries to prove. Some of these we are in 
process of proving, but may not live to see established 
beyond cavil. It is peculiarly the inspiration of this 
generation that we can make as well as discover truth. 
If its will is directed to love instead of toward selfish 
power, love will be the larger truth. 

Inadequacy of Standards Founded on Individual Expe- 
rience. The one who has the responsibility or the 
opportunity of meeting the situation must realize, first 
of all, that the cause for the girl's attitude lies in 
conditions in her past or present life. These must first 
be known and understood. The teacher or club leader 
who is aghast at the cynicism or "low ideals" which 
intimacy with groups of young women from certain 
sections of our cities may reveal, will understand much 
if she knows their daily environment. One tends always 
to believe that which fits one's own knowledge and 
experience. A girl with the economic background of 
extreme riches or extreme poverty, or of any other 
condition which has disintegrated family life, may 
honestly believe that there is no such thing as affection 
and community of interest in the group composed of 
parents and children ; that all men are lustful at heart ; 
that the supreme motive of all work is money-getting; 
that the only way for women to achieve anything is 
through acrid sex-antagonism; that human life is the 
product solely of blind forces and that it cannot con- 
tinue after it has ceased to respond to the stimuli of 
food and sensation. 

Supplementing Experience. The facts on which a 
girl has built these generalizations are not to be gain- 
said. But they may be offset by other facts. The most 



332 GIELHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

effective service that can be performed is to give the 
girl an intimate acquaintance with a genuine home; 
with an employer who is "white" by every test, with 
men and women whose life so transcends all physical 
limitations that the idea of its extinction is absurd, 
and with those whose work has made them so well 
acquainted with God that conviction radiates without 
verbal argument. When a young woman realizes that 
these ideals have been made actualities, and feels that 
they are supremely worth being universal, she is ready 
for the '"faith" that the ''practical'' mind can accept 
from idealism : the acceptance of an hypothesis that 
one is convinced is worth putting to the test of deeds, 
and an enthusiasm that will make it '"work" and there- 
fore prove its truth. 

The converse of this process is also necessary. If, 
for the sake of duty and efficiency, a young woman must 
have a respresentative knowledge of all the facts and 
conditions of life, then when her life has been a happy 
and sheltered one, she must know that this condition 
is not universal. If unselfish love has been her envelop- 
ing atmosphere, mutual interests have made the family 
life the most delightful conceivable, and goodness and 
integrity are her family heritage, she must have an 
adequate realization of the extent to which wickedness 
and unhappiness prevail. If such a girl approaches 
her twenties without feeling that her immediate con- 
cern includes the conditions of her community, in labor, 
health, sanitation, and education, some one has failed 
in her education. Those who have accumulated in- 
terests and habits of servuce through the wise education 
of the preceding years will be apt to go on through 
the momentum thus acquired. If a recoil comes, it 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 333 

will be through an experience of being balked by the 
sin which is at the root of the misery of the world, 
and an ensuing sense of the hopelessness of endeavor. 
This recoil must not be permitted to become permanent. 
Persistence will produce experience of happier out- 
come. Those whose education and environment have 
made their outlook narrow and their interests self- 
centered till now, can be led into wider fields. The 
childlike fascination of the novel and the curious is 
still available, and one is never more responsive than 
now to the stimulus of contagious enthusiasm and the 
spur of concrete personal responsibility. 

Relating Individual Standards to Social Needs. Per- 
sonal problems cannot be adequately solved till it is 
realized that the individual and the local community 
are bound up with conditions throughout the world. 
The solution must include taking one's full share of 
responsibility in the home, in neighborhood and civic 
organizations, in the church and its wider plans for 
the kingdom of God. Only a small fraction of our pres- 
ent generation of adult women have achieved this 
realization. In consequence, a vast amount of effort 
is as futile as that expended by a squirrel in its revolv- 
ing wheel. There is a great ideal of motion, but at the 
end everything is just where it started. A recent 
article^ on the activities of church women in a typical 
suburban community, wittily traces the individualism 
and futility of the generations of "Ladies' Aid So- 
cieties" to the wrong start in the cabin of the May- 
flower! While the men were making a constitution 
binding them all to community action, the women 
were patching garments and using the scraps for a 

* Charities and Suburbs, Emily S. Johnson, The Survey, September 4, 1915. 



334 GIELHOOD AXD CHARACTER 

patchwork quilt, garments and quilt each belonging to 
the individual worker. This eternal patching of things 
outworn, and small thrift of saving little pieces, seem 
typical of women's customary part in meeting com- 
munity needs. Wise use of outgrown but good ma- 
terial, and of the scraps and by-products, is indeed a 
part of efficiency; but a really efficient person is -pri- 
marily making something rather than always making 
over. The latent power of working together to secure 
rights for themselves or for others who are wronged 
and helpless is shown daily by the achievements of 
girls, both with and without the advantages of educa- 
tion and wealth. 

At this period the most intelligent and creative 
altruism is possible. The young woman has a back- 
ground of experience, a quickness of judgment, a 
readiness of reasoning power, a creative imagination, 
and an executive ability of adapting means to end 
which can readily be turned to fruitful use. If she has 
been wisely guided in the preceding stages, she has also 
a flaming zeal to put into execution the accumulated 
emotional energy of her girlhood acquaintance with the 
wrongs of the world. If her past has left her indiffer- 
ent, there is no time when wisely guided experience can 
so quickly arouse her from that indifference. The 
permanence and worth of her future social work will 
depend upon her achieving at this time an emotional 
poise such that sentimentality never fogs common 
sense, and a clear consciousness of social solidarity. 
Much good will is nullified in its effect because of a 
class consciousness. The girl with lavish privileges 
sometimes vitiates her work by doing it "for'' the 
"poor and needy," instead of "with other folks." Per- 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 335 

haps quite as often the girl who is struggling upward 
surrounds herself by an artificial barrier of ice or acid 
against the honest friendliness of those whose different 
station is surely not their fault. But the girl embit- 
tered by privation must be prevailed upon to be fair, 
and the unselfish sympathies of other girls enlisted to 
the end that the riches accumulated by others shall not 
deprive them of the reality of living. 

Standards of Honor. It is a rather interesting ques- 
tion as to the place in developing the larger solidarity 
that is occupied by the "class conscious" phase. In 
an illuminating discussion of "honor among women"^ 
a clever writer defines honor as "a man's sense of 
obligation with regard to those rules of social conduct 
which are not outwardly or legally binding, but whose 
infringement will, in the opinion of his equals and 
therefore in his own opinion, tend to declass him." 
(Or, put psychologically, it is the intense satisfy ingness 
of approval from those persons from whom it is in- 
stinctive to desire it, and the intense discomfort of 
disapproval from those persons.) This author thinks 
that honor is among women a latent quality because 
"women have never in the past had a class sense. 
Servants and college girls and business women have 
developed it because they have a class feeling and a 
degree of personal independence." Most women, how- 
ever, have adopted the consciousness toward them- 
selves of the men to whom they belong, and "virtue," 
in the sense of inviolability of possession, has become 
the feminine trait corresponding to masculine "honor." 
It is for the leaders of to-day's young women to help 



6 Honor Among Women, Elisabeth Woodbridge, Atlantic Monthly, November, 
1912. 



336 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

them formulate a standard of honor that can be 
accepted as binding by all women, of whatever outward 
differences in station ; one by which all personal petti- 
ness and "cattiness," all insincerity and meanness of 
motive, "will, in the opinion of her equals and there- 
fore in her own opinion, tend to declass her." 

This standard must obviously be a general, a human 
standard, rather than a class or a sex standard. The 
greatest obstacle to honor in women is a faulty educa- 
tion which has permitted them to judge matters by 
personal preference instead of by principles of justice. 
An illustration may show how far-reaching are the 
moral results of this faulty standard. An attractive 
and petted young woman married a skillful young 
mechanic. Her childhood habit had been to coax 
prettily for what she wanted, and if the better judg- 
ment of older persons still refused, to cry for it till 
she got it. The young man was efficient and trust- 
worthy, and during some labor troubles was delegated 
to do guard duty at night over some important ma- 
chinery. This made it lonesome for the wife, and the 
husband suggested that she go with him, as he was 
relieved at midnight; so all went well. A little later 
he was again called to go back to the factory at night, 
this time to meet an important committee of the labor 
union in secret conclave. He explained regretfully 
that he must go, and that he must go alone. Then, 
quite oblivious of the embarrassed roomer who could 
not escape, "wee wifey" began a trying scene of tears 
and accusations. He could not love her, or he would 
do as she wished. Patiently and tenderly, over and 
over again, the claims of duty and honor were ex- 
plained. Finally he had to leave her, stormily sobbing, 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 337 

to go to his duty. After he left she spent the evening 
cheerfully enough; and later, through the thin parti- 
tion, could be heard evidence that she slept steadily 
till awakened by his latch key. Then began low, slow 
sobs, implying that she had wept ever since he left her. 
It was a crude, crass use of one of the most elemental 
means of producing discomfort, employed for the selfish 
purpose of wearing out his resistance. That it was a 
moral issue never troubled her. Only a real standard 
of honor, made general in all schoolrooms and among 
all groupings of girls, will reach effectually the girl who 
has neither personal stamina nor good breeding at 
home. 

It is a very small proportion of later adolescents who 
go to college, but they have formed a fine laboratory 
for experiments in group eflSciency whose results are 
being carried out in wider fields of social and indus- 
trial organization. Student self-government is long 
past the experimental stage. Those who in their stu- 
dent days tried out the principles of cooperative and 
democratic self-help in achieving collective aims, in 
dormitory or athletic grounds, have often become effec- 
tive leaders in applying the same principles to girls in 
clubs and Young Women's Christian Associations. In 
the matter of the sense of honor which Miss Wood- 
bridge attributes to college women, in the article just 
quoted, some of the conclusions from Miss Tanner's 
delightful study'^ are worth comparing. 

She finds that sixty-five per cent would tell "white 
lies" to add to another's happiness, fifty per cent would 
exaggerate to make conversation interesting, and 



7 The College Woman's Code of Honor, Amy E. Tanner, Psychological Review 
(1905). 



338 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTP:R 

thirty-seven per cent would "jolly" the credulous (half 
of these with the express intention of helping the cred- 
ulous girl). By an overwhelming majority they would 
not use another's plot in writing a story, but twenty-one 
per cent w^ould use a "pony," and twenty-five per cent 
would use accidental help in an examination. Of the 
forty-eight per cent who would not use a "pony," only 
one fourth gave as the reason the weakening effect on 
the girl herself. Sixty-seven per cent felt that open 
cheating was less dishonorable than secret, and an 
equal number would risk "bluffing" an instructor on 
unprepared recitations. Miss Tanner concludes that 
"the college girl appears to be a person with a thor- 
oughgoing contempt for sneaking and out-and-out 
lying, but with sufficient intelligence and sense of 
humor in most cases to enjoy any sort of contest with 
wits, even though she risk her scholarly reputation 
thereby, . . . She will sacrifice truth for courtesy and 
friendship, but rarely has enough social sense to under- 
take the punishment of the wrongdoer." This fact she 
thinks "due to the monarchical government of home 
and school," and that, therefore, the girl is not respon- 
sible; and wisely suggests that she be challenged to 
see that the "social demand and the demand for truth 
can both be satisfied by the exercise of her wits, that 
is, fact" ; that "exaggeration and lying are both stupid, 
not clever" ; and that the issue is "not honesty vs. love, 
but the coordination of the two." 

The two studies quoted suggest the relation of this 
question to the specially feminine mental characteris- 
tics noted on pp. 293-300. In her decisions regarding 
"bluffing" or "white lies" or reporting another girl's 
wrongdoing, she is probably unconsciously influenced 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 339 

by her vivid mental imagery of the way the other girls 
will act, and is acutely conscious of the details of conse- 
quences in her personal relationships. These details 
are so numerous that they tend to obscure the issue. 

Testing the Standards: 1. Reliable Performance. "Effi- 
ciency," in the large sense of womanhood that is 
efficient in both personal and social demands, is gained 
through efficiency in the separate mental, moral, and 
physical activities, plus efficiency in relating these 
separate activities in due proportion to the general 
purpose of the life. That life is not successful which 
has "every sense but common sense"; and "common 
sense" sums up that sense for proportion, for adjust- 
ment of means to end, which makes the separate talents 
useful. One of the tests is the kind of enterprise that 
the girl undertakes. Another is her ability to carry 
through any enterprise she has begun. Thus to finish 
anything once undertaken, not to drop it when it be- 
comes difficult or irksome or inconvenient, is one of 
the most essential pieces of moral discipline a girl can 
be helped to exercise. 

The business woman has a certain amount of this 
discipline in "keeping her job" and getting promoted. 
But it is a training which does not transfer itself with- 
out effort to other spheres of activity. The best test 
as to whether it has become a part of her character is 
in her volunteer church and social service and neigh- 
borly helpfulness. A splendid woman, at the head of 
many organizations using volunteer workers, in a great 
city, said to a college teacher : "I hope you will succeed 
in training a generation of girls of leisure who will not 
shirk responsibility, and who are ready to exercise 
initiative." 



340 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

Efficiency, both in the separate activities, and in 
the power to weld them into a whole, comes from the 
practice of correct habits. Habits are gained through 
practice, but much time can be saved if practice is 
intelligently directed. In establishing the habits of 
initiative, resourcefulness, stability, and perseverance 
the laws of exercise and effect work no less surely than 
in simpler sensori-motor combinations. Success in the 
work itself is a powerful '^satisfier." Executive and 
organizing ability develops in situations that demand 
it; and if adult advice is needed, it will usually be 
sought in time. ^*We have 'helped^ our mothers and 
older sisters before, but you make us do it," gratefully 
said a young volunteer club helper to a social worker. 
Any girl who is worth developing, once she sees the 
responsibility is hers, not to be dropped until the enter- 
prise is finished, will "make good" somehow. It is too 
"annoying to the organism" either to fail or to be a 
"quitter." 

2. Judgments and Decisive Actions. It is in the mak- 
ing of independent judgments and acting upon them 
that character is made and solidified. In a place of 
crushing responsibility a young girl replied bravely 
to some women who were advising indirectness and a 
compromising "policy," "When am I ever going to live 
by my principles if I don't do it now?" Men and 
women of experience have the right and the privilege 
to give advice when it is asked, and sometimes to volun- 
teer facts whose knowledge must alter the situation, 
but they must learn how not to make another's judg- 
ments for her. A girl sought advice in a question of 
honor and duty. "What ought I do ?" she asked, long- 
ing to throw the responsibility for decision upon the 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 341 

older person. A few questions made her define the 
issue so sharply to herself that she saw it was not a 
matter of not knowing her clear duty, but of unwilling- 
ness to shoulder the unpleasant consequences of per- 
forming it. Like most girls when they are made to 
discriminate intellectual indecision from moral coward- 
ice, she met the challenge bravely. 

There are cases where a girl attempts something for 
which she lacks natural fitness, or sufficient experience, 
or both. It may then be the part of friend or teacher 
to intervene, to save results that are too valuable to 
be risked, and to help the girl in the difficult task of 
acknowledging her mistake. Sometimes such a crisis 
occurs in some enterprise of a group, and sometimes 
in the girl's choice of work. The social responsibility 
for the latter problem has been discussed in a previous 
chapter; but the educational duty may include the 
parents or guardians as well as the girl. When a false 
ideal in the home endangers the future of the girl, it 
is worth considerable risk of discomfort on the part of 
the educator to attempt to convince the family that 
another course is wiser. 

The Educational Problem of Establishing New Stand- 
ards. The older friend need not expect nor desire that 
girls shall accept her standards; but she may hope to 
help them include, in the standards they work out for 
themselves, the moral essentials. Much is best done 
by concentrating time and attention on the natural 
leader of a group. If that leader is convinced of a 
given thing, she will have her own, effective way of 
bringing about its acceptance by the others — thinkers 
and imitators alike. The group motives will be power- 
ful aids in making the right standards the real habits 



342 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

of action of group members. It is only when a stand- 
ard is ingrained in habit that its effect on character is 
permanent. Habits can be formed all through life, but 
every added year requires greater vigilance. One can 
acquire any habit that is organically possible to the 
individual, by continuous and persistent attention. 
The public opinion of the group is a powerful stimulus 
to attention to the habits which impair efficiency in 
personal relations. Caustic wit, sarcasm, faultfinding 
are due to habits connecting ideas, and these habits 
can be broken by persistent neglect of those idea con- 
nections, and persistent connection with kindly and 
good-humored associations. ("Pollyanna" and her 
'^glad game" is an apt illustration.) 

Often the girl's problem is not so much that of ade- 
quate standards as it is that of choosing the right 
standard by which to measure the particular conduct. 
Skill in moral judgment comes by practice also; and 
the value of the practice is in establishing a number 
of connections between situations and principles of 
action that will work with the promptness of habit 
when there is no time for consideration. Once a club 
had voted to raise a special assessment. Said its 
president to its treasurer, "You and I are working 
harder than any of the others. You can manage so that 
the amount from the others will cover the bill, then 
mark our names ^Paid^ and put in items to that amount 
for Tostage* or ^Expenses.'" The treasurer was very 
young, but she promptly analyzed the situation with 
the one word — "graft!" and her reflex emotional re- 
sponse brought an apologetic plea, "Will you ever speak 
to me again?" 

Analysis and Attention as Educational Methods. For- 



PKOBLEMS AND METHODS 343 

tunately there are many situations a girl must meet 
which permit her to make her decisions in comparative 
leisure. It is here that the experienced friend can help 
her to analyze the elements of the problem and test 
the principles that are applicable. An example or two 
may make this process clearer. 

A girl is elected president of her class or club. The 
first business meeting brings her into unfamiliar rela- 
tions with the familiar persons. The consciousness 
that fifty pairs of eyes are fastened upon her, and that 
fifty half-hours will be wasted if things do not go 
smoothly, forms a tremendous stimulus. Much of this 
stimulated energy is "discharged" through instinctive 
reflexes into quickened respiration and circulation, and 
general glandular and muscular disturbances. Her 
knees shake, her heart thumps, her cheeks burn, her 
mouth is dry, and her tongue cleaves to the roof of her 
mouth. All these bodily sensations are a powerful 
bid for attention, and they usually get it. The oft- 
listened-to formula for recognizing a speaker or putting 
a motion is accordingly pushed out of the focus of 
attention, and a slip of speech brings laughter, more 
reflex emotion, and increased discomfort. A second 
attempt will find the association of "standing up to 
preside" and "emotion of stage fright" already made, 
and that connection will be more easily made than any 
other. 

But "eyes fastened on me" and "what will people 
think of my awkwardness" are not the only ideas 
connected with "standing up to preside." "Fifty people 
interested in the question in which I am also inter- 
ested," and "each one must have a fair chance to dis- 
cuss it," are also elements of the same situation. If 



344 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the attention can be resolutely centered on those fac- 
tors, and on the "response" of "repeating the motion 
clearly so every one can hear," and "counting the vote 
straight," the foundation is laid for another habit. One 
connection prevents the other from acting. Mental 
rehearsal of the right ideas together will strengthen 
that connection still further. When she again meets 
the situation she can choose the important factors to 
attend to, and these will bring the "right" response 
through the practice-strengthened habit. The satisfy- 
ingness of "not making a fool of myself that time" and 
later of being told, "You carried that thing through 
splendidly," all strengthen the habit of attending to the 
right elements and making the right response. 

Later comes the different situation of presiding at 
a public iDrogram. The first thought of it brings a 
vivid image of a crowd of strange people, and the old 
"stage fright" emotional connection responds. Then 
bit by bit she imaginatively puts together the elements 
in the situation on which her attention should be cen- 
tered, and the appropriate responses. "These persons 
will not be interested in what I look like, but in what 
the club can do. They want to hear the speaker's 
name distinctly, and to know what it is all about. I 
can get it all clearly put into words while there is no 
audience to distract me, and I can commit those words 
to memory as well as if some one else wrote them. All 
I have to do is to walk a dozen steps, bow, and speak 
the words so they can be heard. I could walk before 
I was two years old, and the platform is surely strong 
enough to hold me! so I need neither stumble nor 
shake." She thus connects the habits from her regular 
club meetings and ordinary experiences with those 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 345 

elements in the novel situation which are like the situ- 
ations to which they are the customary response. The 
new elements at the same time become associated with 
neglect of emotional distraction, and so increase the 
number of kinds of situation which can be met with 
ease and power.^ 



8 No better illustration of this educational principle can be found than in one 
of Zona Gale'a earliest stories, The Shyness of Beth Croft. It is long since out of 
print, but through the kindness of Miss Gale, and of Mr. MacKaye, then editor 
of Success magazine, which published it, a r6sum6 and quotations can be given here. 

Beth Croft had lived all of her nineteen years in Warwick Junction, where "they 
always went in one another's kitchen doors without knocking, and it got into their 
manners." She "used to go down to the railroad station when the flier came in 
at four o'clock and stand in the agent's window. That was right opposite where 
the parlor car stopped," to see the women in the car. Some of them were the 
kind she wanted to be. In the crude little town "Miss Holly was the only one 
that was dififerent." Miss Holly appreciated the fineness in Beth that made her 
"hate the very way all the girls in Warwick Junction are — their voices, and the 
way they laugh and talk and run one another." Miss Holly with her niece and 
nephew, Margaret and Sidney Bliss, take Beth to the seashore. Dxiring the prep- 
aration "Beth found her misgivings and her dread increasing every day. . . . How 
could she go, knowing that her own speech and manner were crude and common- 
place and labeled 'Warwick Junction' for all to see — . . . Couldn't they see 
that she was going down to Sea Hills to be laughed at, and probably to be taken 
for Miss Holly's maid?" 

Even before they start, during the ordeal of tea at Miss Holly's, "At the mere 
sight of those two perfectly poised strangers, it was upon her again — a flood of the 
unconquerable shyness that could drown her simple, gentle personality, and make 
of her the awkward, frightened little country girl she looked, with the shyness 
that was worse, she often thought miserably, than ugUness itself." While her 
face lights at all the beauty of the day and of their appreciation of it, all she can 
manage is some utterly stupid commonplace that closes each opening in the 
conversation. After announcing that she must go, she cannot get away until 
Miss Holly gently saves the situation. Miss Blis3 decides that she will save 
Beth from the acute suffering she sympathetically discerns. 

They reach Sea Hills at promenade time, and the picture is a fairyland of fulfilled 
ideals to Beth until the greetings begin. "As the first note of introduction sounded 
she looked aghast at the rustling, rising group, and saw a blur of modish gowns 
and strange faces, with a background of men like Sidney Bliss, and she turned and 
ran away." Miss Holly thought she had been imable to resist her first glimpse 
of the sea, but Miss Bliss understood and followed the terrorized girl. " 'Beth,' 
she asked, 'have you ever had it out with yourself, and asked yourself what it is 
you are afraid of when you are with people?' 'Yes,' said Beth simply, 'I'm afraid 
because they know more than I know. They know how to act. They dare 
move about a room — and when I do I'm awkward and my hands are awkward. 
I can't wear my clothes aa they do, or speak the way they do. I can't forget 
anything about myself — I can't forget that I am all the time trying and trying so 
hard to do my best. They don't seem to be trying at all, and yet are what I'd 
give anything in this world to be. And I just can't. I don't know how, and I 
never shall know how.' " 

Beth has tried to say the things that etiquette books suggest, but her sense of 
fitness had mercifully preserved her from uttering them. Miss Bliss decides to 
try to "cure the girl of shyness in society by studying beauty in solitude," and 
points out to Beth that "The same thing that makes you hate shyness and awk- 
wardness makes you love the cliffs and gulls and sails out here. That is why you 
can be anything you want to be. The girl who loves beautiful things has no 
right not to be beautiful and satisfying in everything she does and says. . . . 
You must stop being shy simply because awkwardness isn't beautiftil." Love of 



346 GIKLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

The habit of analyzing both situations and responses 
into their elements and selecting those connections 
which will give most power is applicable in many ways. 
If the young woman habitually seeks, in her relations 
with other human beings, to find the elements of jus- 
tice, courtesy, and sincerity, and from responses pos- 
sible under these heads to choose those that will give 



beauty is the "keynote of all soft voices and beautiful motion and pleasant speech. 
. . . But many of those you have been envying haven't this keynote. They are 
well-bred and at ease simply because they have been brought up so. . . . 'But 
I don't know the right thing to do,' said Beth, doubtfully. 'I wouldn't have the 
least idea . . . whether to shake hands or not.* . . . 'In half an hour you 
can probably settle all the little uncertainties like that. The main thing is to meet 
people as though they were human beings, not judgment seats. Don't always 
wonder whether you're going to please them. Wonder a little, just at first, whether 
they are going to please you. You have been mistaking the habit of ease for 
cultivation, and you were shy because you felt a false inferiority. . . . Think of 
your being afraid of people who are not alive!' " 

"But the glare and glitter of the dining room at the very first dinner nearly over- 
came the new theory. . . . 'Beth,' said Miss Bliss when they were seated, 'stop 
looking dazed. Besides, it is the mirrora and the chandeliers that awe you if you 
analyze it. And it is the noise, isn't it? Well, just fancy! Where is your sense 
of humor?' " Gradually Beth "learned an important fact — that to look at indi- 
viduals as individuals, and not membera of a big, hostile force, helps immeasurably 
to give people their proper values." 

"Miss Bliss and Beth joined a group on the veranda the next morning, nearly 
the same group from which Beth had fled the day before. 'Remember,' said Miss 
Bliss as they approached the others, 'that you are not meeting the group. You 
are meeting one at a time. You are curious about them! Look in the face of each 
one, and listen to what she says, just to find out if she too has the key to the things 
that you and I know make up life. If she has, then you have found a new friend 
at once. Say the thing that interests you most at the minute ; it may be a touch- 
stone. Remember that — and don't shake hands with anyone — and we have won 
the day!' ... So Beth cast about her for the thing that interested her most, 
and she was conscious, with a little pleasurable thrill, of the self-possession that 
came with the attitude. How utterly different it was from her old blind waiting 
for a chance to say the first poor, obvious thing! 

" 'You must put yourself at your ease, you know,' Margaret Bliss had said, 
'by taking the initiative.' . . . She was surprised to see how many seemed to 
be doing the same thing. She had just learned to recognize it, and, when she 
met some one who said something at once that arrested her attention, she knew 
that she miist not be content with a monosyllabic reply, but must add something 
on her own account. Why, they all knew how to play the game, and they were 
all playing it consciously! All the time before she had not known that, she had 
been thinking it was all a haphazard affair, in which she was in some way bound 
to be the loser. ... It would take time and many meetings, and there would 
doubtless be mortifications; but in the end she saw herself able to meet people 
with open mind and simple speech, ready to take their message and to give them 
hers. 

Sidney Bliss had been detained, and reached Sea Hills three weeks later. His 
well-bred amazement was a delight to Beth. It never ceased to be wonderful to 
find herself noting the mood of another, instead of being panic-stricken at her 
own. To his wondering questions to his sister as to "How did you do it? Did 
you teach her how to act, one thing at a time?" Miss Bliss replies that Beth 
has taught her a new theory; that real transformation can never come to anyone 
through lessons in etiquette, but " ' I took her soul — a little winged thing — and 
drew it softly from its cage of bones,' she quoted, softly." 



PROBLEMS AND METHODS 347 

the most pleasure, her experiences with employers, 
customers, pupils, young girl adorers, friends, lover, 
husband, or children, will be greatly simplified. Many 
quibbles and pettifogging questions of expediency dis- 
solve when analysis pushes the question back to uni- 
versal principles. Some one once wrote, "It is the 
essence of immorality to consider oneself an exception," 
and it seems a hard saying ; but it is surely the essence 
of selfishness, and the harsher term is not far wrong. 
It is not playing according to the rules of the game, 
or failure to keep good humor when those rules prove 
one a loser, that earns for a man or boy the epithet 
"yellow." It would be well for young women to learn 
to play the game of life without expecting its great 
rules of justice and truth to be cumbered with many 
exceptions. 

There is, to be sure, a danger in having a limited set 
of labels for elements, so that really different things 
are called the same; or having too few ready combina- 
tions of responses. The safeguard here is in the supple- 
mental habit of taking time, when there is time, to go 
thoroughly into the elements of each new situation, 
and being sure of just analysis and just decision. This 
practice of flexibility will stand one in good stead in 
situations which permit no deliberation, when re- 
sponses must be trusted to habit for decisive action. 
It is only permitting oneself to be considered an ex- 
ception that blurs moral distinctions. 

Growing Standards. In forming her working stand- 
ards, the girl must also realize that the life purpose 
is itself developing and therefore changing. Standards 
must be capable of expansion. These necessary modifi- 
cations will come from using the standards she has. 



348 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

In forming the habits necessary for duty and efficiency 
she must add the further habit of growth — the habit of 
forming new habits. This essential habit must be 
formed in the years of later adolescence if the young 
woman is to look fonv^ard to the long years of maturity, 
eager and unafraid. 

CONCLUSION 

Those who would help her worthily must realize that 
there is nothing more paralyzing to some young women, 
or more certain to close avenues to personal influence 
with others, than to have the untried ability doubted. 
The creative imagination and optimistic altruism of 
which the young woman is now sublimely capable must 
not be confused with the earlier abstract and dreamy 
romance. That we have not seen the vision that glows 
before her eyes does not mean that it is ^'impractical." 
The visions of other youths have made for her a new 
earth, from which vantage point she, mayhap, sees a 
new heaven. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE FUNDAMENTALS OP A YOUNG WOMAN'S 
RELIGION 

In later adolescence comes one of the crucial periods 
of the religious life. The young woman is now natu- 
rally engaged in making intelligent working plans for 
her future, and the ideals of her romantic girlhood are 
being sifted by new knowledge and tested by experi- 
ence. Experience of love and happiness and success, 
of bereavement and sorrow and disappointment, tests 
religious values anew. Inward growth as well as 
accumulating wisdom give her a wider comprehension 
of the problems and possibilities of life. It is a time 
of the most fascinating possibilities, the most intricate 
problems, and the gravest perils. To meet these needs 
makes an educational attitude on the part of the reli- 
gious adviser imperative. 

Need of Distinguishing Essentials. The first need of 
the older friend who would be a wise counselor amid 
this stress is to have a clear concept of what is essen- 
tial. Truth is eternal, but it is not all known yet by 
the wisest; and an individuaPs attention can focus on 
only one thing at a time. Thus what may seem to the 
mature Christian to be a willful, even an heretical omis- 
sion, may be due merely to the fact that the growing 
soul, busy with crowding experiences, has not yet 
reached the problem involved. Patience is needed to 
distinguish passing phase from permanent bent; but 
one important function of the religious guide is to 



350 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

point out to the novice in living what she may be too 
preoccupied to see when it is most necessary. 

The Evidences of a Healthy Religions Life. What are 
the ^'Christian evidences," not in the sense of the theo- 
logical curriculum but in the ^^observable behavior^' of 
the young woman, that may content those who "watch 
over her as they that must give an account"? It is 
difficult to make a logical analysis of a living thing; 
but neither is it necessary. Life manifests itself in 
living, and disease and danger are evident in distur- 
bances of living processes. What are the normal func- 
tions of the religious life? 

For answer we turn to the greatest "Master in the 
Kingdom of Life," and find that Jesus had certain 
clearly defined standards and tests which he applied 
alike to his own life and to the lives of others. These 
tests in the high realm of personality are essentially 
the same as those by which science distinguishes the 
presence of life in its simplest forms. Living substance, 
of any degree of complexity, will always grow, act 
from inner impulses, react adaptively to its environ- 
ment, and ultimately produce its kind. In what human 
activities did Jesus seek the fundamental evidences 
of spiritual life? Was it not in growth, adaptation, 
activity, and reproduction? 

1. Growth. The life which consists in "knowing the 
only true God" and his revelation in terms of human 
life is eternal in its quality.^ Such a life can never 
come to a standstill. Through maturity, into old age, 
and forever, there is room to grow. But growth is not 
only endless, it is the growth of a whole. Fragments 



1 John 17. 3: "And this ia life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S EELIGION 351 

endlessly succeeding fragments are not growth, and 
they yield no possibility of a growing apprehension of 
God. Over and over Jesus reiterates the value of each 
individual's "own self" and its inevitable loss if the 
direction of its growth is either divided or self-cen- 
tered.2 The conscious direction of growth is a matter 
of the will, and so the first test of a life is its purpose. 
Jesus frankly told the purpose of his own life;^ and 
its varying application to the fundamental problems 
of living is given in the various statements of that for 
which he "came" or was "sent."^ The way in which he 
worked out these problems makes an appeal to the 
young woman's most vital interests. The most satisfy- 
ing evidence that she is growing in the right direction 
is the test that Jesus applied: "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and witli ail thy mind, and with all thy strength : this 
is the first and great commandment."^ 

2. Adaptation. "Life is the continuous adjustment of 
the organism to its environment." The environment 
of a personality must consist primarily of persons. The 
fellowship of persons — past, present, and to come, and 
all together with the Supreme Person — Jesus sums up 
in his concept of the kingdom of God. The first com- 

2 Luke 9. 25: "For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and 
lose himself, or be cast away?" 

* John 5. 30: "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my 
judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which 
hath sent me." 

* Luke 19. 10: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was 
lost." 

Mark 1. 38: "And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may 
preach there also: for therefore came I forth." Mark 2. 17: "When Jesus heard 
it, he saith unto them. They that are whole have no need of the physician, but 
they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." 

6 Matt. 22. 37, 38: "Jesus said unto him. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy^mind. This is the first 
and the great commandment."' 

Mark 12. 30: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first 
commandment." 



352 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

mandment gives first place to the supreme factor 
in this personal environment, but "the second is like 
unto it," and it is by the character of the individ- 
uals reaction to his neighbor that the spiritual life is 
tested. 

Righteousness is the first standard of successful adap- 
tation. To love one's neighbor as oneself Is to recog- 
nize the like value of all selves, and to act accordingly. 
Hence love must be ethical. Again and again when 
emotion or ritualism were offered as evidences of reli- 
gion, Jesus, like the prophets, strips them away in his 
searching test for justice, mercy, and truth. A young 
woman's life that squares with the Ten Commandments 
and the Sermon on the Mount gives satisfactory evi- 
dence of moral vitality. 

Moral Insight. No organism can be adaptable to its 
environment if it is not sensitive to it. One of the 
unerring tests applied by Jesus to the spiritual life 
is ability to perceive spiritual significance. "He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear'' was the only pre- 
requisite for receiving his teaching. The spiritual in- 
sensitivity that attributed to "the prince of the devils" 
the works which revealed the heart of God the Father 
is a sin that "hath never forgiveness"^ because the optic 
nerve of the soul, paralyzed by self-administered poison, 
is incapable of responding to any stimulus in heaven 
or earth. One symptom of the onset of this moral 
obtuseness is attributing wrong motives to others. Its 
first stage is yielding to wrong motives oneself. Sensi- 
tivity to personal environment is illustrated supremely 
in Jesus's consciousness of the Father's moral ap- 
proval,''' combined with his tender compassion to the 

«Matt. 12. 22-37, Compare 16. 1-6. 7 John 15. 10, 8. 29. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGION 353 

coarsest and most ignorant of the sinning multitude.^ 
One test of a young woman's spiritual life is her grow- 
ing discernment of moral needs in herself and in others, 
and her willingness to use the discipline of life as a 
means of learning its spiritual laws. 

Loyalty. In the intricate adaptations required by 
personal relatior. ships, success demands adequate con- 
trol of the individual life. Every girl who thinks 
realizes- that efficient control of her life requires such 
a knowledge of its possibilities, of what is needed to 
stimulate them, and of the future, as she herself cannot 
have. Other persons may have a partial knowledge of 
some of these elements that exceeds her own, but they 
are ignorant of her inner self, and of the inner selves 
of the people who act upon her. Only the God who 
made the individual life and the universe in which it 
lives can fit the one to the other. Jesus joyously an- 
nounced that he had found the secret of freedom in 
loyalty.^ "Thy will be done" was to him no passive 
martyrdom or cringing before the inevitable, but a 
warm and stimulating enthusiasm. When he offered 
this joy to his friends it was with the frankest admis- 
sion of its cost. To find eternal life one must lose 
the self that is limited by mental reservations and 
secret cowardice.^^ But he demanded this extreme of 
loyalty because he had experienced its fullness of re- 
ward.^ ^ In this spirit also Paul chose as his honorary 
title, "The bondslave of Jesus Christ." With what 
attitude is the young woman meeting those circum- 
stances over which she has no control? Does she 



8 Luke 7. 39-50, Mark 2. 15-17. 

* "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work" reveals 
the community of purpose between a "full-grown son" and his Father (John 4. 34). 
10 Matt, chapter 10. " John 10. 17-18. 



354: GIELHOOD AND CHARACTER 

"submit/' sullenly or resignedly, or does she seek 
the meaning of circumstances in further and 
more conscious direction of the voluntary details 
of life in accordance with God's unique plan for 
her? 

3. Activity. There is no test of life more surely 
indicative of its direction and scope, its qaality and 
quantity, than its output in deeds. "Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" 

Work is the touchstone of purpose, and it is the cre- 
dential Jesus offered for his own mission.^^ With 
fearless directness he turns the same test upon others. ^^ 
"Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
which I say?"^^ Nowhere is his sarcasm keener than 
in his pictures of those whose attitude toward work 
is that of laziness and time-serving ;i5 while those who 
are eager to get things done because they see the reason 
for doing them are said appreciatively to have entered 
into the joy of their lord.^*^ Never before has a girl 
been so keenly alive to this joy as now. There are 
few "thrills" comparable to the realization that the 
work which had to be put off until one should be "old 
enough" can be begun now. All the accumulated am- 
bition and surety of successful trial is restrained with 
difficulty until a place to begin can be found. To be 
barely twenty, yet to find that children are really 
learning their lessons, and loving and obeying her so 
that she is a "successful teacher"; to find one's em- 
ployer depending on her for special tact in selling, or 
accuracy in accounting; to see the finished products of 
her skillful fingers accumulate; and, surest test of all, 

12 John 5. 36; 10. 37. is Luke 10. 25-37; John 13. 13-17; Mark 9. 39. 
M Luke 6. 46. is Matt. 25. 24-30; Luke 17. 7-10; 12. 45-48. 
10 Matt. 25. 21, 23; Luke 12. 35-38, 42-44. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S EELIGION 355 

to receive promotion and increased pay ! One may well 
be careful not to misjudge; nevertheless, the way a 
girl's daily work is done, and the amount of "extras" 
that are crowded in because she sees their need and 
wants to do them, form one index of a girl's life and 
its abundance. 

Service. But work the rewards of which are limited 
to one's individual self will not long satisfy the normal 
human being. This energetic fellowship in the purpose 
of needed work leads inevitably into an unselfish serv- 
ice far removed from ostentatious almsgiving and earn- 
ing merit by good deeds. Those whom Jesus described 
as meeting the self-evident needs of sick, hungry, naked, 
lonesome, and inefficient persons were surprised at the 
appreciation expressed. ^"^ But their astonishment was 
not less than that of those who had made irreclaimable 
failures of their lives simply because they found it 
more comfortable to do nothing. ^^ The instinctive in- 
terest in others, like all instincts, will lose its power 
if it is not both stimulated and exercised. The Chris- 
tian girl believes in human brotherhood, but she needs 
a chance to make it work. It is one of her fundamental 
religious needs to be offered opportunities to do definite 
things for other persons in such a way that she can see 
results. Tangible results, not too long delayed, are 
part of the best preparation for larger enterprises that 
will take a lifetime, and for the great ideals that enlist 
the labor of all the citizens of the kingdom of God till 
time shall be no more. Tangible results, however, are 
not dependent on tangible gifts only. The young 
woman needs to share her ideals and purposes, her 
good cheer and affection ; and, hardest of all, to share 

17 Matt. 25. 34-40 iSMatt. 25. 41-45. 



356 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

her weakness and needs/^ to serve others by giving 
them opportunity to serve her. Humility and good 
will, effort and constancy, are part of the test of 
spiritual activity. 

Faith. Outer activity will not long continue with- 
out an inner conviction of its necessity and worth, but 
it is not necessary even now that the immature young 
woman should be lured to all duty and all endeavor by 
the prize of certain and immediate success. The birth- 
right of her fast-maturing youth is the faith which is 
the ''giving substance to things hoped for, the convic- 
tion of things not seen." One of the sadly common 
mistakes of religion has been the misapprehension of 
"faith in God" as something that one merely ''has." In 
other personal relations the concept is not thus one- 
sided. One not merely "has faith in" his friend or 
commander, but recognizes the obligation to "keep 
faith with" him also. It is only this fully personal 
use of the term that is valid in religion. "Childlike 
faith" is truly faith, because it draws inferences from 
what is known of the character of parents or friends 
or God, and in the new and unknown situation "acts 
accordingly." Its childishness consists in the charac- 
teristic expectancy of having something done for one. 
The sign of maturing human life is its ability to 

"Rejoice we are allied 
To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive!" 

So, maturing faith draws inferences from what is 
known of God's character and purpose, and to approxi- 
mate that character and further that purpose, ''acts 

i» Compare Luke 22. 27, 28; Mark 14. 33-37. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGION 357 

accordingly."2o ^^ confine a young woman's faith to 
her childish comprehension is to rob her of one of her 
fundamental religious rights. 

This broader faith is the secret which turns disap- 
pointments into wisdom, disillusionments into sympa- 
thy, and defeat into victory. It "removes mountains" 
because of its certainty that God's plans include mov- 
ing that mountain and that oneself is the person God 
wants to do it. It is the potent force in making the 
whole self available for God's use until the last shovel- 
ful has been "removed and cast into the depths of the 
sea !"2i Harder test yet, if the certainty is that others 
are to share the task, it keeps one "despairing of no 
man."22 Instead of helplessly or bitterly asking, 
"What is the use of having ideals?" faith looks about 
for others whose longing for the unobtainable is just 
as passionate, and proves that the "use of having 
ideals" is to help others achieve them, and to achieve 
them with others. "Why could not we?" is usually to 
be answered, "Because of your little faith."^^ Jesus's 
eager inquiry "When the Son of man cometh, shall he 
find faith on the earth ?"24 is affirmatively answered 
by the young woman whose steadfastness of endeavor 
bears the test of going on with plans which are larger 
than she can wholly see, and which demand more than 
her conscious ability ; and the test of persisting in the 
face of shiftlessness and ingratitude in others. 

4. Love That Gives Life. The inner urge of life, from 
God himself to his least creature, is to produce more 
life of its own kind.^s Life that is full and rich and 



20 Compare Jesus's comment on Luke 7. 8, 9. 

21 Compare Matt. 17. 20; 21. 21; and Mark 11. 23, 24. 

22 Luke 6. 35-38. 23 Matt. 17. 19, 20. 

24 Luke 18. 8. 26 John 3. 16; 17. 2, 18, 20. 23; 15. a 



358 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

satisfying is not content until it is shared with those 
who have it not. Paul has given a most illuminating 
comment on Jesus' striking statement of the real basis 
of ''family likeness."^^ The way this relationship is 
extended is shown in the passionately affectionate 
appeal to "My little children of whom I travail in birth 
again until Christ be formed in j^ou . . . "^7 in this 
sentence from his own heart experience Paul shows us 
the purpose and the product of the love without which 
the most self-sacrificing activity is futile.^s The young 
woman who is eager to have others share her knowl- 
edge of God ; who is working tirelessly in the Christian 
training of her pupils and younger brothers and sisters, 
is giving the supreme evidence of life. 

But what if the young woman is not thus growing? 
What are the conditions of failure, which her friends 
and guides must seek out and correct? In any realm 
of life, an excess of available power not only vastly 
increases desirable possibilities, but involves corre- 
spondingly increased dangers. The religious life of 
late adolescence is fraught with perils. If the great 
danger of middle adolescence is possible failure to 
"integrate a personality," the outstanding danger of 
this later period is that the personality may deteri- 
orate, either through an actual lessening of the indi- 
vidual's worth and effectiveness, or merely through an 
"arrested development" which thwarts the promise of 
her possibilities. 

The Peril of Disproportion. The very urgency of all 
the vital interests that engross the young woman's 
attention, the immediacy of her problems, involve a 

28 Mark 3. 35. 27 Qal. 4. 19. 20. 28 i Cor. 13. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S KELIGTON 359 

danger. They may push the elements of her life out 
of proportion. She may not see life for the multiplicity 
of things. Keligion is an attitude toward values, and 
one often quite literally '^loses her religion" in a practi- 
cal loss of perspective. The part looks larger than the 
whole ; permanent and transient lose their distinguish- 
ing marks. Here comes the great moral challenge of 
Jesus.29 His emphasis is on the values of life that 
are more than food or raiment, or houses and posses- 
sions, or pleasure and ease, greater even than indi- 
vidual affections that would strangle growth. Pro- 
portion can best be secured by testing the valuable 
things of life on the scale of permanence. Are they 
worth while in the scheme of eternal life? Jesus' state- 
ment of the pitiful bargain of giving one's ^^own self"^^ 
in exchange for the whole world shows that to him 
oneself is infinitely precious, and also tragically easy 
to lose. 

The Peril of Indifference. One of the easiest ways of 
losing the possible self is by failing to recognize the 
possibility of so doing. A group of Christian young 
women students in a great university, in analyzing 
their problem as leaders, placed first and foremost the 
indifference of their fellow students toward religious 
ideals and activities. They were neither hostile nor 
contemptuous; they were simply not interested. A 
similar analysis is often given by thoughtful church 
workers regarding the life of the church young people ; 
and it has long been the problem of the church seeking 
the '^unchurched masses." The reason indifference is 
so perilous is that an organism that does not respond 
to the essential features of its environment has ceased 



29 Matt. 10. 24-39: Luke 14. 25-35. so Luke 9. 25. 



360 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

to grow. The outer conditions and the inner possi- 
bilities of the almost-mature young woman are chang- 
ing. If she is not adapting herself to those changes, 
she is liviing in only a limited sense. In the spiritual 
realm, as in any other, to limit a living thing is to 
kill it. 

The Peril of Deterioration. Death in the spiritual life 
is a gradual process. ^'These are they which are sown 
among thorns; such as hear the word, and the cares 
of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the 
lusts of other things entering in, choke the w^ord, and 
it becometh unfruitful."^^ It is in late adolescence and 
early maturity that this seems an especially apt de- 
scription. The inescapable responsibilities are absorb- 
ing; there is the hope and the possibility of winning 
wealth or fame; the zest for experimenting with life 
is at its height and there is unhampered freedom to 
try anything that appeals. It is now that materialism 
and self-indulgence begin to sap spiritual vitality. The 
young woman who must win success in her profession 
by unflagging diligence, or the one who spends mo- 
notonous days in factory or office, is "too tired to go 
to church." Sunday is "the only day for 'God's out- 
of-doors' or for friends." She "can't be expected to 
work so hard and be depended on for helping in church 
or teaching in Sunday school." Thus many a young 
woman develops a sordid self-pity or manufactures a 
martyr attitude that shuts her completely from the 
glad freedom of service and the inspiration of thinking 
on great themes. 

There is no minimum wage which limits the "deceit- 
fulness of riches." Always their promise is that once 

»i jSIark 4. 18, 19. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGTON 361 

a certain amount is assured for necessities, once a com- 
fortable margin eases the anxious grind, money will 
be valued only as means to spiritual ends. But if wor- 
ship and service and culture are postponed until there 
is leisure and surplus, and not included proportionally 
in the slenderest scale of living, they will never survive 
the vampire grip of the love of money. 

It is now too when ambition is strongest, visible 
power and tangible success most alluring, that the 
danger is greatest of the essential "immorality of con- 
sidering oneself an exception." Unbroken application 
to work, omitting universally established essentials for 
wholesome living, may mean an inevitable breakdown 
for almost everyone, but one's own health and strength 
are immune. Careless, irreverent, flippant, and ques- 
tionable associates are almost sure to undermine the 
moral life, but not when one is so sure in her ideals 
as oneself — and she must succeed in this enterprise in 
order to have leisure and freedom to seek more con- 
genial associates. But when health is undermined, 
friends scattered, standards lowered, reputation ques- 
tioned, and the success is seen to be itself transient, 
even if it is realized — then comes cynicism or heart- 
break. 

In helping a maturing young woman to avoid her 
special perils and live up to her fullest possibilities, 
her religious guides meet many problems. 

The Problem of Ignorance. Many a girl grows to 
young womanhood in absolute ignorance of the highest 
values of life and of the motives which actuate the 
followers of Jesus. Such a girl is usually quite as 
ignorant of the language and associations of the church. 



362 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

In presenting the Christian standards to those un- 
acquainted with them there is danger in taking for 
granted information that is not possessed. Words and 
phrases rich in meaning to those habituated to them 
are to others either meaningless or have associations so 
different as to make their interpretation as naive as a 
child's. 

"Just what do you mean by 'the Christ-life' ?" asked 
one young school-teacher of another who was telling 
of a recently attended summer conference. The biology 
teacher saw that the question was an honest request 
for information, and explained to the best of her 
ability. The drawing teacher continued: ''My people 
never went to church. I went irregularly to Sunday 
school, and stopped altogether when I was twelve. You 
church people use many puzzling phrases, but we 'out- 
siders' don't like to be thought 'heathen,' and few of 
us will risk the bother or the embarrassment of asking 
questions. When I have a class of children who have 
never had drawing, I do not use the words 'perspective' 
and 'foreshortening' in the first lesson. They will use 
them naturally, later, but if I began with them they 
would 'hate' drawing." 

The girl with adequate religious and moral training 
from babyhood has a tremendous advantage in mere 
information over the girl without such a background 
of living and written precept and example. A young 
woman has a different task in regulating her own life 
if she knows what Abraham and Sarah, Deborah and 
Barak and Gideon and Jephthah's daughter, Ruth and 
Hannah and Mary, Jesus and Paul, David Livingstone 
and Horace Pitkin, and her Sunday school teacher, did. 
But the girl who does not already know has still the 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGION 363 

adolescent eagerness to know, and on the full force of 
this the wise teacher can rely. There is some positive 
advantage in not having to "break up the crust of 
familiarity'' to get at the vital meaning of these great 
stories, and this advantage should be emphasized rather 
than the disadvantage of ignorance. Yet those who are 
helping her need to remember that there is nothing in 
the memory that was not first in the experience. Jesus 
promised that the abiding Spirit of God would not 
only "guide into all truth," but also "bring to remem- 
brance" Jesus's own words and deeds. Unless these 
words and deeds are gotten into the memory, they will 
not be available to guide the life. 

Many a girl, however, who has been brought up in 
church and Sunday school, and even in a Christian 
home, lacks knowledge of the Bible which is now intel- 
lectually satisfying or stimulating. The ignorance of 
succeeding generations of young people can only be 
lessened by increasing the supply of competent parents 
and teachers. The most immediately hopeful means 
of such increase lies in inspiring our present generation 
of later adolescents with a sufficient conviction of the 
need of this work to put themselves under training 
for it. 

The Problem of Changing Habits.^s For a young 
woman, who has not been trained in the habits of reli- 
gious thinking and acting, to accept the Christian 
standard of principle and conduct as her own is, in its 
most literal sense, conversion. The essential difference 
between the conversion process in this period as com- 
pared with that in middle adolescence is that in the 



•* For fuller discussion of these problems see the author's Special Problems with 
Girls (in preparation). 



364 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

earlier period life is more easily adjusted in the new 
direction. Some sort of readjustment has then to be 
made, anyway. If that readjustment was then made 
within some mold which is now recognized as inade- 
quate, the main outlines of character being already 
^^set," rebuilding implies more or less waste of habit 
reflexes that are now felt to be undesirable. In the 
ordinary virtuous and well-meaning young woman 
there are, of course, vastly fewer habits to be uprooted 
than in the reformation of the vicious; but there are 
enough to be broken and acquired to call for hard and 
continuous effort.^^ 

Problems Due to Inner Growth and Changed Relation- 
ships. As a girl's life passes from predominating 
romance to predominating responsibility, through the 
rainbow blending of them both, there is a kaleidoscopic 
shifting of emotions and ideals. Ideals are waxing and 
waniDg, and often warring. 

1. Changing Ideals. The young woman must learn to 
welcome spiritual growing pains. ^^In the process of 
reflection upon satisfaction, desire itself undergoes 
transformation." Religion is a most persistent critic 
of the state of its accepted standards. In the very 
process of unifying the interests of life a questioning 
and readjusting of values is inevitable. "With what 
feelings would most of us face the sentence to return 
to old allegiances? They have had their day; they 
have ceased to be. And this not because we have 



33 This fact probably accounts for the statistics which show that actually fewer 
do adopt a new standard, and less successfully, in each succeeding year of age 
after the close of the teens. The emotion which accompanies this readjustment 
varies in individuals from zero to cyclonic intensity, but it bears little relation to 
the speed and success of that readjustment. The girl may need help to see that 
the new habits are the real test, and not to become unduly elated or discouraged 
by her "feelings." 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S EELIGION 365 

proved fickle but because they have proved finite."^* 
The hero worship of early youth has its large place, 
but all such admirations must be "successive and frag- 
mentary or diverse and incongruous," for "examples" 
so ardently followed can be only types of life, and as 
such, limited. The danger of a persisting worship of 
a single heroic personality is that "by its mastery over 
us it may come to hide the fact that the moral life is 
larger than any single type can embody," or by limit- 
ing our imagination limit our moral sympathy. The 
"absolute perfection" dreamed by the early adolescent, 
and objectified upon some most unperfect person by 
the romantic adorer in later girlhood, is realized by 
the young woman to be a goal always waiting for all 
of us to achieve. 

2. Changing "Satisfiers and Annoyers." There comes 
an inexplicable change in the "satisfyingness" of doing 
and being done for, of protecting and being protected ; 
and in the persons with whom these relations are satis- 
fying or annoying. The protecting, directing attitude 
from some member of the family may change from a 
matter of course to a matter illogically irritating. Can 
they not realize that she is grown up? But this same 
protecting manner from one of her boy friends, which 
a few years ago would have been indignantly rejected 
as "none of his affairs," is now strangely and thrillingly 
satisfying. A similar change often takes place in the 
young woman's attitude toward God. She brings him 
a heart so full of gratitude for the rich fullness of her 
life that she is "ashamed to ask for another thing." 
If she has been taught prayer only in this limited sense, 
she may feel shyly awkward about praying at all. 

'* MacCunn, Number 65, p. 270 et passim. 



366 GIRLHOOD AND CHAEACTER 

Overwhelming responsibilities may make another's 
greatest conscious need that of adequate direction and 
guidance of her own life in its perplexing tangles; or 
one may be so strong and capable and willing that 
the thought of dependence on anyone whatever is 
irksome to her. The best safeguard against the peril 
of losing her sense of need is to be given work for 
human beings so needy that her resources are ex- 
hausted in coping with problems beyond her unaided 
power. 

3. Changing Experiences of Fellowship. On no fact 
of human experience is there greater unanimity than 
this: to understand and be understood, to love and be 
loved, to serve and be served, by some other person or 
persons is the supreme good of life. Poets, novelists, 
religious seers, of every race and of every century, have 
celebrated "Friendship, the master passion," "Love, the 
greatest thing in the world," and "communion," or 
"the practice of the presence of God." Any leader of 
girls who are approaching womanhood will find as she 
gains their complete confidence that there is no ideal 
to which they are more responsive, nor about which 
they are doing more earnest thinking, than that of 
sincere and worthy friendship, love, and worship. 
There is no greater conscious religious need in the life 
of any young woman than that her personal relation- 
ships shall be fitted into an adequate scheme of life, 
so that each affection may develop to its highest value, 
and at the same time enhance and not diminish the 
value of all the rest. The young woman who grows 
into maturity bitter, cynical, or malicious, does so 
because her principles have not been adequate to meet 
her experiences with friends or associates, lover, or 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S EELIGION 867 

those who need her, or with that sum total of life which 
is always ^'too much for one" without God. 

Sometimes, if the nervous organism or mental organ- 
ization is unstable, some suffering or terror acts as a 
disintegrating force. There is then real danger that 
the personality may deteriorate in unity, character, 
and purpose, and "salvation" is the achieving or re- 
achieving of unity, stability, and freedom. Recent 
studies show that "in order to have an organized self 
we must have some idea around which to organize; 
perhaps the idea of God is the greatest organizing 
center."^^ Certain it is that the power of God unto 
salvation is one of the great realities of life, and this 
is attested eloquently in the steadying of unstable lives 
by conscious fellowship with him. But God is more 
than a means to self-realization; in the completion of 
life's values he is circumference as well as center. 
Fellowship with God, as with any other personality, 
implies "not merely some one whom I experience, but 
some one who experiences me." Prayer, or communion, 
has been a fact of experience in all ages,^^ and of the 
most normal as well as of the most unusual. Its 
value for the completion of the self merely takes on a 
new meaning in the light of modern psychology. 

The human self which is capable of communion with 
the divine life must be, without that stimulus, only 
warped and undeveloped. No conception of religion 
can be satisfying which is expressed in emotional or 
intellectual, or even in ethical terms alone. To be 
adequate, religion must include fellowship with God. 
And yet often, in the very agony of desire for divine 

35 Les Maladies du Sentiments Religieux, Miirisier. 

36 The Meaning of Prayer, Harry Emerson Fosdick, (Number 140) is an invalu- 
able treatment of the whole subject. 



868 GIRLHOOD AKD CHARACTER 

guidance in making the great decisions of life, the 
heart is too noisy with its asking to hear God's an- 
swer. The girl who is thus troubled must learn first 
to still the voice of fear and the voice of desire, that she 
may listen. In this quiet, if she will lay the alterna- 
tive courses of action alongside the purpose of God as 
communion and study have taught it to her, conviction 
of the rightness of one or the other course, or of neither, 
and hence of need to wait for further possibilities, will 
deepen to certainty. 

4. Changing Ambitions. Of one of the greatest per- 
sonalities of the ages we have this significant state- 
ment : ''When Moses was grown, ... he went out unto 
his brethren, and looked on their burdens."^''' Unity 
and completeness of life are won, not by repressing or 
thwarting desires, but by making them all completely 
social. It is the lesson Jesus patiently taught his 
closest friends, the ambition not to excel others, but 
to lift them; not to lord it over them, but to serve. 
Simply and quaintly is this expressed by the little 
dressmaker whose poet soul had made her "different" 
from the others in the commonplace village where her 
whole life had been lived. When the chance came, late, 
to leave the commonplaceness and go to the beauty and 
gracious living of which she had dreamed through the 
years, she explains her refusal : 

"I set to work on myself to make 'me' as good as 
I knew, an' I worked an' worked, like life was nothin' 
but me, an' I was nothin' but a cake, to get a good bake 
on an' die without bein' too much dough to me. An' 
then all at once I see that couldn't be the only thing 
He meant. It didn't seem like He could 'a' made me 



37 Exod. 2. 11. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGION 369 

sole in order to save me from hell. An' I begun to 
see He must 'a' made me to help in some great, big 
hid plan or other o' His. An' quick as I knew that 
an' begun wantin' to help, He begun showin' me when 
to. . . . An' here — here I know how. . . . An' if I went 
away. ... I wouldn't know how to be any rill use. 
... In town I expect I couldn't be anything but cake 
again — bakin' myself rill good, or even gettin' frosted ; 
but mebbe not helpin.' An' I couldn't risk that — I 
couldn't risk it. It looks to me like helpin' is what 
I'm for."38 

The conviction that ^^helping is what one is for" may 
dawn slowly, or come with an awakening shock; or it 
may have been breathed in from babyhood and make 
any other conception of life incomprehensible. But 
in it alone is personal freedom and fullness of life, and 
the source of patience, tolerance, and understanding 
for the dark and ugly mysteries of sin and suffering 
and unfulfilled ideals. It transforms saying "Thy will 
be done" from passive to active. 

Problems of Intellectual Reconstruction. Along with 
the changes of maturing youth which are more evident 
and whose occasions are more readily fathomed, go 
those changes in the thought life which may be seldom 
or never shared with others. The young woman's 
active mind is busily, almost involuntarily, sorting, 
testing, rearranging, discarding the principles of life 
which have been gained from every available source, 
and with the result creating her own religion. The 
process may or may not be accompanied by emotional 
annoyance or suffering. Sometimes the girl just emerg- 
ing from home may have to meet both these intel- 

38 Friendship Village, Zona Gale, pp. 322, 323. 



370 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

lectual questions, and the moral questions that usually 
come during the crisis of middle adolescence in one 
great tempest of doubt and uncertainty. Never is her 
need for wise counsel and patient guidance more im- 
perative. She must know that her doubt is not wicked, 
but that she must be willing to act without certainty, 
that certainty may come. 

This period of mental reconstruction is practically 
universal. It is a phenomenon of the mental develop- 
ment of late adolescence, not merely a product of the 
schools. It comes as surely to the girl of keen men- 
tality who has not had the opportunity to acquire from 
the schools the "facts to think with" as to the one who 
is paralyzed by the number of diverse facts she has 
acquired. The one who has more information than 
experience must have patience and steadfastness to test 
her information by experience as it comes, and to wait 
for experiences which alone can make the connecting 
link to give unity to the seeming contradictions. The 
girl whose personal experiences are unrelated to the 
great realm of the universal needs to be helped with 
adequate information, and also to be helped to suspend 
judgment until she can acquire these other facts. Tem- 
perament, special interests, and the circumstances of 
life all combine to make the bewildering variety of 
"intellectual difficulties" which the older friend of 
young women will have propounded.^^ These same 
elements also determine the manner in which chaos 
organizes itself into coherence, and the length of time 
it takes.40 



39 Some of the "difficulties" which recur most frequently with certain tempera- 
ments or under certain circumstances are treated, at greater length than is possible 
here, in the author's Special Problems with Girls (in preparation). 

40 It is significant to compare this intellectual aspect of religious belief with 
experiences that are "purely intellectual." In both realms men and women pass 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S KELIGION 371 

Most personal problems dissolve in the sunlight of 
sympathy. And there is nothing more wholesome for 
intellectual pride than to discover how widespread 
are one's own questionings. Said a college girl: 
^'When I came home I took a class in a mission Sunday 
school, of young women both colored and white, all 
^shif'less' and illiterate. A girl only a little younger 
than I, who could barely read, asked some of the very 
questions I've been tormented over this past year! In 
trying to form an answer so simple that she could 
comprehend, I had answered myself, and I wondered at 
the simplicity of it." 

The Problem of Choosing Means to End. The aim of 
religious activity is most tersely stated as that of 
"completing the values of life, unifying them, and mak- 
ing them permanent." But because the self continues 
to grow it cannot be "completed, unified, and made 
permanent" after the manner of a conserve which is 
put together and cooked and then sealed and put away 
until used! The social environment and the social 
problem continue to change as new factors enter in, 
and a religious social ideal can continue satisfactory 
only as it enlarges. A religious faith must be dynamic 

from the beliefs of childhood to those of maturity, some gradually, with no notice- 
able transitions; some with no great transitions, but with several incidents remem- 
bered as giving an impetus; others can divide their thinking into a few sharply 
defined stages marked by definite transitions; still others have a period of chaos 
with one pronounced awakening unifying everything very clearly. This pro- 
nounced transition in the intellectual life usually occurs between eighteen and 
twenty-two. Women seem, from statistics given, to be less apt than men to 
experience the great transitions, to take longer for it when they do, and to be less 
apt to reject cherished beliefs and more afraid of admitting that they cherish 
contradictory ones at the same time. More women reported that their readjust- 
ment of thought was due to their entering college or joining the church, and more 
men were influenced by personality. The suddenness and the depth of the mental 
readjustment seemed to have little to do with the intensity of emotion accom- 
panying it. While women less often have the intense experiences, the greatest 
radicals are women. Possibly this is one case where individual variation is greater 
among women than among men. (For the data of this comparison see The Spiritual 
Life, Coe; The Psychology of Religion, Starbuck; and article "The Period of 
Mental Reconstruction," W. C. Ruediger, American Journal of Psychology, vol. 
xviii, pp. 353ff.) 



372 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

or perish. Where is this faith to be nourished? Like 
animal or vegetable life, the spiritual life must have 
an appropriate means of nourishment, a medium to 
grow in. To employ an obsolescent phrase too good to 
be allowed to lapse, one must use the "means of grace" : 
worship, instruction, and service. 

Worship. If a girl doubts the existence of a real 
world or a real God, she must still acknowledge the 
reality of the self that doubts them. The fact that she 
communicates with other selves that are also sure of 
their own existence is a fact to be acknowledged, even 
if not explained. To suspend spiritual activity until 
she has puzzled out her abstractions is spiritual suicide. 
It is here that the devotional meetings of the church 
have an especial value. While at every such meeting 
she may hear stereotyped prayers and cant phrases, 
that church is poor indeed where there will not be 
some ^'reports of personal experiences with unseen 
spiritual forces, in the laboratory of daily living,^' that 
may supplement, confirm, or suggest her own. The 
intellectually troubled girl must be honest enough to 
put these reports to the "scientific test of repeating 
conditions to see if the same results follow.'' If they 
do, there is a spiritual law. A priori denial, without 
experiment, is most unscientific.*^ The emotional girl 
will find in such meetings the repeated stimulus that 
will help build steadfast habits, and the matter-of-fact 
girl with prompt and practical activity will learn that 
some "talking" is as helpful as silent doing. 

This spiritual "fellowship with the saints" and to- 
gether with God is one that can be neglected only at 
peril of ultimate starvation. It is a hard test, if one 

<i Free quotation from lecture to students by Dean Bosworth of Oberlin. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGION 373 

has toiled relentless hours every day in the week, to 
worship where the music is off the key, the voices 
jarring, the sermon unrelated to life, the members not 
cordial, and perhaps even decorous behavior in the 
congregation lacking. Two courses are open : to find a 
place where the adjuncts of worship are already pres- 
ent, or to get in sympathetic touch with others who 
are seeking also to worship, and with them change the 
untoward conditions. It is both cowardly and short- 
sighted to omit the church assembly altogether. 

Instruction in righteousness never ceases to be a 
condition of growth. Those who are most deeply im- 
mersed in service need most of all to keep their own 
life fresh. The girl who has taken a class in the 
primary department, or the young mother who must 
stay with her little ones, needs opportunity for inspira- 
tion in study of the Bible, or missions, or other phases 
of the achievements and the methods of the kingdom 
of God. And despite all our books and periodicals, the 
consideration of great themes in mutual discussion of 
interests personally and socially immortal, under the 
leadership of a living voice, can never be dispensed 
with. 

While the problems of our own time are in a certain 
sense unique, yet "there is nothing new in human 
nature." We must know the present forms of the evils 
we have to fight, their methods of offense and defense, 
and the means that are available to conquer them by 
those willing to "organize on the level of the reflective 
will." But the moral and personal factors are human 
and universal. The sublime solutions of the personal 
and social problems of evil, wrought out by Amos and 
Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Seer of 



374 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

the Exile, are the foundation on which Jesus built. 
His life exemplified their principles and his teaching 
fulfilled them; neither his life nor his teachings can 
be thoroughly understood and carried out as a present 
program of Christianity if one is ignorant of the teach- 
ings of either the prophets or Jesus. 

Service. One of the foundation principles of the 
Christian program is that persons have the value of 
permanence, that is, of immortality. To some minds 
the intellectual certainty of personal immortality can 
never come until service is given to another soul that 
would lose most of its meaning unless that soul had the 
value of permanence. The one who is troubled about 
the "historicity" of the gospel accounts of Jesus's 
works and his resurrection, will, if she commits herself 
unreservedly to the program of Christianity, find her- 
self in places where only the present directing force 
of a living personality is adequate to the situation. 
The only avenue of conviction for some truths is 
through experience in a project where only these truths 
will work. The very fact that we cannot understand 
some of the great problems of life is proof that they 
are part of something infinitely permanent. We can- 
not understand any process till it is complete, and our 
mystification in these great problems shows that we 
are still in the middle of them. 

SUMMARY 

With the undimmed eagerness and enthusiasm of 
girlhood, yet with the vision and steadfastness of 
womanhood, these years of lengthened adolescence, the 
gift of our advanced civilization to young women, are 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RELIGION 375 

years of unmatched power and promise. It is the time 
for the ^^religious revaluation of values" to become the 
settled habit of life. Knowledge is essential for intelli- 
gent valuation; affection makes the conviction of the 
supreme worth of persons dynamic ; and both determine 
the direction of the will to efficient and organized serv- 
ice. Through worship and service the self and society 
grow together into a richer realization of the possi- 
bility of each in the plan of a God who is Father of 
a society in which all men form one family. The prob- 
lems which burden heart and mind are seen to be due 
to living and thinking in the middle of an uncompleted 
project which demands our help. Solutions are seen 
to be possible only through sharing the good will and 
the activity of God; then enough of his purpose can 
be comprehended to guide further activity. 

"What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is 
the first and great commandment. And the second 
is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
On these two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets." 

"The mass of people," says Professor Coe, "do not 
understand what is happening until it has happened. 
Poets express it, philosophers interpret it, and prophets 
direct it." Later adolescence is the period of inde- 
pendent religious thinking. The growing new person- 
ality looks out on the happening with fresh insight and 
grasps it as a new whole. While the mass of our adoles- 
cent girls will not understand what is happening until 



376 GIRLHOOD AND CHARACTER 

it has happened, they can be helped to do the will of 
God that they may, ultimately, know. And nowhere 
but among the young women, as well as the young men, 
now in the tutelage of us, their older friends, are the 
poets who will express the infinite meaning of the life 
of the coming generation, the philosophers who shall 
interpret it, and the prophets who shall direct it. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following titles have been selected from among many- 
times their number, as the most helpful now available in their 
respective fields. Where brief, popular books exist, they have 
been chosen and the more technical, scientific volumes omitted. 
In some cases the difficult works alone are trustworthy, and 
the reader is referred to them with due notice as to their 
technicality. For the benefit of the large number of workers 
with girls who have not access to a large library the names 
of publishers have in most cases been added. Prices are at 
present undergoing such rapid change that it seemed inexpe- 
dient to attempt to indicate them. A letter of inquiry to any 
of the publishers will bring prompt information. 

Those books which should be first purchased for a library by 
any group of parents, teachers, or social workers with girls, 
have been indicated by a * preceding the title. Others are 
quite as indispensable for those working in particular fields 
as are these for the general subject, and this fact will be noted 
in the comment appended. 

I. Social, Industrial, and Historical Factors 

1. Addams, Jane. *Tlie Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. 

Macmillan. 

An interpretation of the eternal elements in current life, by 
a seer. Indispensable for a large vision of present-day girl prob- 
lems. 

2. . *A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. 

Macmillan. 

"All that the average "reader needs to know about the vice 
situation." A relentless, clear-eyed, but hopeful pointing out of 
the currents which draw girls into destruction, and of the indi- 
vidual's responsibility for community action that shall assure 
safety. 

3. Butler, Elizabeth. Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores. 

Russell Sage. 

Facts indispensable to all who Work with girls employed in 
stores. 

377 



378 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

4. CooLiDGE, Maey Roberts. Why Women Are So. Henry 

Holt & Co. 

An historical-social study of American girls and women, espe- 
cially in the nineteenth century, separating sex-characteristics 
from the effect of environment. Valuable in calling attention to 
possible causes of present situations conditioning the development 
of girls. 

5. Edwaeds, Richard Henry. *Popular Amusements. As- 

sociation Press, 1915. 

The social aspect of the whole recreational problem. Should 
be pondered by every friend of girls. Of special interest are 
chapters I; II (pp. 50-56); III (pp. 70-81, public dance halls) ; 
V (pp. 105-109, amusement parks) ; VI (pp. 121-122, excursions 
and outings) ; VII (pp. 133-144, summarizing the social morality 
of the whole problem). Exhaustive and well-classified bibliog- 
raphy with each chapter. 

6. Foster, W. T. (editor). *The Social Emergency. Houghton 

Mifflin, 1914. 

Chapters on various phases of social and personal hygiene and 
their relation to economic, recreational, educational, moral, and 
religious problems by strong writers. Positive emphasis on central 
value of the family and its ideals, and a morality that is militant. 
"No virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic." The teaching phases 
are well handled. The chapter on Girls is the least strong, be- 
cause of what it does not say ; all the chapters have much help 
for workers with girls. 

7. Maclean, Annie Marion. Wage Earning Women. Mac- 

millan. 

The standard sociological study of the subject. 

8. Richardson, Dorothy. The Long Day. 

An autobiography of an intelligent girl thrown alone into 
the conditions of employment and living met by the inarticulate 
thousands in a great city. One of the earlier books to arouse 
action to remedy some of the conditions described ; still too 
largely true. 

9. Saleeby. Woman and Womanhood. 

A sane and constructive treatment of present social and educa- 
tional problems involved in the "feminist movement." Chapters 
on girl life help to understand special problems in their relation 
to the whole. 

10. Tarbell, Ida. The Business of Being a Woman. Mac- 

millan. 

Sincere and forceful statement of high ideals, of dangers 
which threaten them, and of socially effective methods of achiev- 
ing them. 

11. Thomas, W. I. Sex and Society. Univ. Chicago Press, 

1907. 

A study of sex as a factor in social evolution. Keen discus- 
sion of mental differences in sexes and races as lack of opportunity 
and specific practice. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 379 

12. TuTTLE, Florence Gueetin. The Awakening of Woman. 

Abingdon Press, 1915. 

The meaning of "feminism" to the "ordinary woman." Helps 
to put in perspective the whole of life for which girls' characters 
are to be formed. 

13. Van Kleeck, Mary. Working Girls in Evening Schools. 

Russell Sage. 

Why some girls fail to "take advantage" of evening schools, 
and the conditions of life of those who do. Invaluable for all 
interested in the supplementary education of employed girls. 

14. Van Vorst, Marie and Mrs. John. The Woman Who 

Toils. Doubleday-Page, 1903. 

One of the earliest first-hand researches into the life of girls 
and women in domestic service, factories, and various other in- 
dustries. Aroused attention and led to altering some of the 
conditions described, but still true to the life of many. 

15. Van Waters, Miriam. The Adolescent Girl Among Primi- 

tive Peoples. In the Journal of Religious Psychology 
(published at Clark University), Vol. VI, No. 4, and 
Vol. VII, No. 1. (Oct., 1913; Jan., 1914.) 

A doctor's dissertation, but of fascinating interest ! Traces 
the origin and development of girls' education in the light of the 
whole life of primitive peoples, and throws light on modern 
survivals. Comprehensive bibliography. 

16. Wald, Lillian D. The House on Henry Street. Henry 

Holt, 1915. 

Significant both for its analysis of the development of present 
social conditions of our immigrant young women, and means 
of ameliorating them, and also for its expression of the spirit 
of social service which appeals with increasing strength to the 
privileged young women of to-day. 

17. Webster, H. Primitive Secret Societies. Macmillan. 

Contains much valuable matter on the way primitive society 
trained its adolescents, both boys and girls. A reference work. 

18. Westeemarck, E. A History of Human Marriage. Mac- 

millan. 

Standard reference work. A help to understanding the evolu- 
tion of human ideals. 

(See also Numbers 20, 23, 24, 31, 32, 33.) 

II. Studies in Special Fields of Adolescent Girlhood 

19. Crow, Martha Foote. The American Country Girl. Fred- 

erick A. Stokes, 1915. 

For efficient girlhood on the farmstead — health, training, equip- 
ment, and ideals. Available sources of information listed. Sum- 
mary of recreation possibilities and methods. Practical discussion 
of budgets, and original "personal score card." Up-to-date bibli- 



380 BIBLIOGKAPHY 

ography. Especially valuable for source material in letters from 
girls from all sections of the country ; attractively illustrated. 

20. Daniels, Haeeiet M. The Girl and Her Chance. 

A vivid presentation of the facts of home and school and in- 
dustrial conditions in which a large percentage of adolescent girls 
must make their way to womanhood. 

21. EspEY, Clara E. *Leaders of Girls. Abingdon Press, 1915. 

An excellent practical manual for leaders of groups of girls at 
different ages. Helpful also in problems of personal relations be- 
tween the leader and individual girls. 

22. King, Ieving. *The High School Age. Bobbs-Merrill, 1914. 

Excellent summary of the physiological and psychological 
changes characteristic of adolescence, in both boys and girls ; 
statistics and figures in accessible and intelligible form. Whole- 
some emphasis on the gradualness of development, and on inter- 
relatedness of home, school, and community in development of the 
individual. 

23. Laughlin, Clara E. The Workaday Girl. Revell, 1913. 

Sympathetic, human stories of individual girls who work, with 
vivid pictures of their work and play and "living" (or existing) 
conditions. Each story is true of thousands of other girls, and 
the tragedies, too, are typical. Should be in every social worker's 
library. 

24. McKeevee, Wm. A. Farm Boys and Girls. Macmillan, 1912. 

Educational principles applied to rural home and community 
conditions and concrete possible activities. Especially valuable for 
the lists of books and periodicals with each chapter. 

25. . ^Training the Girl. Macmillan, 1913. 

Methods and principles of home, school, and social training, 
from infancy to young womanhood. Religious and moral educa- 
tion shaped by idea of special "religious instinct developing at 
adolescence." Much that is generally valuable, and much that is 
applicable only to homes of economic comfort and to communities 
which have not passed the limits of congested population. Valu- 
able bibliography with each chapter. 

26. MoEGAN, Anne. The American Girl. Harpers, 1915. 

Four earnest essays in social philosophy, relating the girl's 
education, responsibilities, recreation, and future, to her place 
in the development of the world's civilization. Frank recognition 
of peculiar dangers and weaknesses in her environment and 
character. AYorth while. 

27. Paddock, A. Estelle. Overtaking the Centuries. National 

Board, Y. W. C. A. 

Gives the American girl a sense of kinship in problems and 
opportunities with young women in the great nations where for 
the first time in millenniums a girl's life is different from her 
mother's. 

28. Slatteey, Margaeet. *The Girl in Her Teens. Pilgrim 

Press, 1910. 

The pioneer book in the field. Elementary and brief ; helps 
to a sympathetic attitude. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 881 

29. . *The Girl and Her Religion. Pilgrim Press, 

1913. 
The values in religion that appeal to girls. Sympathetic, in- 
spirational. For both girls and leaders. 

30. Tarbell, Ida. The Ways of Woman. Macmillan, 1916. 

Concrete problems of the larger education for womanhood, 
sound in principle and delightful in style. (For example, "The 
Twenty-cent Dinner.") All mothers of early adolescent daughters 
should read chapter VII. 

31. True, Ruth. The Neglected Girl. Russell Sage, 1914. 

(Bound in same volume with "Boyhood and Lawlessness.") 
An intensive study of a group of girls "not desirable" for 
regular settlement clubs. A challenge to social and educational 
workers in any city. 

32. Woods and Kennedy. *Young Working Girls. Houghton 

Mifflin, 1913. 

A summary of evidence from 2,000 social workers witb girls 
who live in the most crowded quarters of our cities and work 
in its least skilled industries, analyzes conditions and their 
causes, and indicates a concrete, constructive program. A nota- 
ble contribution. 

33. Breckenridge and Abbott. The Delinquent Child and the 

Home. Russell Sage, (1912, revised edition, 1916.) 

Based on a study of juvenile delinquency in Cook County, 111. 
Includes case studies of 50 delinquent girls, and of others in the 
classified analysis of causes. Helpful for any worker who deals 
with cases of delinquency. Positive and constructive. 

34. Healy, Wm. (A.B., M.D.) The Individual Delinquent. 

Little, Brown, 1915. 

Shows by illustrative cases how the factors entering into each 
individual's delinquency are to be ascertained, as a basis for 
curative treatment. Makes clear the intricacy of the numerous 
factors involved, and how to get at the thing that needs doing. 
Indispensable for one whose group problem is complicated by a 
delinquent individual. Exhaustive and usable bibliography. 

35. ScHOFF, Hannah Kent. The Wayward Child. Bobbs- 

Merrill, 1915. 

A partly classified mass of "human documents" obtained from 
hundreds of prisoners, giving an account of causes which sent 
them into criminal careers. The work of a sympathetic and 
practical reformer and executive, not a scientist. Emphasizes 
doing the obvious and immediate things to be done by parents, 
courts, and schools. 

36. Holmes, Arthur. Backward Children. Bobbs-Merrill, 

1915. 

First aid to the worker who suspects that a girl is % problem 
because she is subnormal. Helps toward a preliminary diagnosis, 
gives practical educational methods, sources for special help. 
Clear as well as authoritative. 

(See also Numbers 3, 13, 15.) 



382 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

III. Interpretations of Girl Life 

Literature is the means by which most of us become ac- 
quainted with more personalities than our limitations would 
otherwise permit us. The personality of the 'teens is too elusive 
to have been given its quantitative share in literature, but the 
following stories and novels have helped the compiler, at least, 
to understand different phases of girlhood's universal manifes- 
tions. 

Two story books of a generation ago that this writer has 
been unable to trace are The Doctor's Daughters and The 
Children of the Manse. They remain fresh in memory for 
their truthful portrayal of early girlhood. 

37. Alcott, Louisa M. Little Women, An Old-FasMoned Girl. 

Gii-l life of perennial vitality, under conditions now of historic 
importance in understanding our social heritage. 

38. Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 

The foreign child transplanted to this country for her adoles- 
cence. Insight into the lives that teachers and social workers 
must understand. 

39. AuDOux, Marguerite. Marie Claire. Doran. 

The little French orphan in a convent asylum is bound out on 
a peasant farm during her teens. Through the marvelous art of 
these autobiographical sketches of a life so different in externals 
from any in our land, one sees as in purest pastelle the phases of 
the eternally maidenly. 

40. Barrie, J. M. Tommy and Grizell. 

The Scotch setting alters but little the problems that instinct, 
temperament, and society's obtuse misunderstandings bring into 
the lives of woman-children in any modern civilization. 

41. Bell, J. Oh! Christina! 

An inimitable portrayal of the staid spinster's difficulties with 
crude, romantic, blundering early adolescence. 

42. Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 

The thrilling plot of the novel should not obscure the delicate 
drawing of the development of a sensitive, lonely girl's soul. 

43. Fisher, Dorothy C. The Bent Twig. Holt. 

A psychological analysis of a present day girl in the west and 
the east, the democracy and aristocracy, of our own life ; a demon- 
stration of educational theory with the neatness of a laboratory 
experiment : and a breathlessly fascinating novel. 

44. GiLMORE, Inez Haynes. Phoehe and Earnest. 

The girl we all know from the outside, as we see her in our 
home or school room, made transparent by a sympathetic observer 
so that we may see how we and the boys and girls and other folks 
she knows aiTect the growth of her inner self. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 383 

45. Hunt, Una. Una Mary. 

The "other self" of an imaginative child, and how the ethical 
without the emotional in education failed. The latter part of 
the book records the unifying of the personality in a swift crisis 
period. A remarkable document of the religious life. 

46. Jordan, Elizabeth. May Iverson Tackles Life. 

In a fashionable Convent boarding school a group of healthy, 
bright girls in their early and middle teens work out their own 
ideas as they are stimulated by literary, social, and political ideas 
from the outer world. A keen and clever portrayal of the mental 
processes of that t.ge. 

47. Kelleb, Helen. Story of My Life. 

The development of one of the most remarkable young women 
of our day is due to a more conscious and controlled educative 
process than is possible with most girls. 

48. Larcom, Lucy. A New England Girlhood. Houghton 

Mifflin. 

An autobiography of a remarkable woman at one of the signif- 
icant periods of American industrial development. 

49. Laughlin, Clara E. The Evolution of a GirVs Ideal. 

Prom the little boy next door (because he came with the 
packing-box playhouse), through the impossible, romantic idealiz- 
ing of girlhood, to the finding of content when experience has 
stripped desire of its dearest non-essentials. A help to systematic 
understanding of things the girl does not put into words to grown- 
up friends. 

50. Martin, George Madden. Emmy Lou. 

This revelation of the heart of a child at Its close shows the 
beginning of the new, unfolding self. 

51. Sedgewick, Mrs. Anne. Tante. 

This serious and artistic novel contains, besides much else, 
a comprehensive study of the results of a selfishly fostered 
"crush." 

52. Syrett, Netta. Rose Cottingham. 

Perhaps the first novel to confine itself to the development of 
a girl through adolescence, and to close before the mating motif 
enters. 

53. Fillmore, Parker. The Bosie World. Holt, 1914. 

Responsibility came to a 14-year-old girl by way of an ineffi- 
cient mother and a selfish big sister. In mothering the smaller 
children and the nice, boyish boarder she "integrated a person- 
ality." To know how she did it will suggest how to help the 
vast number of girls growing up in commonplace surroundings. 

IV. Mental and Spiritual Development 

54. Alexander, John. The Sunday School and the 'Teens. 

International S. S. Association. 

Reports of a commission which studied the subject broadly. 
Facts and conditions, and some helpful constructive suggestions. 



384 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

55. Atheakn. The Church School. 

A comprehensive manual for all phases of religious edncation 
through the church. Excellent brief summaries of the psycholog- 
ical characteristics at different ages. 

56. Betts, Geoege Herbert. Fathers and Mothers. Bobbs- 

Merrill, 1915. 
Popular, inspirational essays, from modern scientific viewpoint. 

57. CoE, George A. *The Spiritual Life. Eaton and Mains, 

1900. 

One of the first studies in the psychology of religion, Espe- 
cially illuminating discussion of individual differences in adoles- 
cent religious experience and expression. 

58. FoEBUSH, W. B. *Guide Book to Childhood. G. W. Jacobs, 

Philadelphia, 1915. 

A veritable encyclopedia on every subject connected with 
the development and training of children from infancy to ma- 
turity. Terse summaries and references to all the needful 
authorities. 

59. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence (2 volumes). Appleton, 

1907. 

A monumental work, the pioneer in the educational study of 
the period of youth. Valuable for citations from sources diflBcult 
of access. Extreme form of recapitulation theory. Its treatment 
of the development of girls and suggestions for an educational 
program for them is dominated by a sentimentality that would 
result, practically, in fostering eroticism. A necessary refer- 
ence book for the worker who studies girls with scientific thor- 
oughness, but not essential for the lay reader with limited time. 

60. • Youth. Appleton. 

A condensation of the two volumes on "Adolescence," giving 
the point of view and the educational theory of the larger work. 

61. Holmes, Arthur. Principles of Character Making. Lip- 

pincott, 1913. 

Admirable in its insistence on the functional quality of char- 
acter, and in genetic view of morality. Presupposes much phi- 
losophical theory, ignores girlhood in its treatment of Youth, and 
carries "epoch" theory of education to an extreme. 

62. Griggs, E. H. Moral Education. Huebsch. 

Comprehensive view of entire field of moral education and its 
relation to the child in home and school ; both principles and 
methods ; clear. One of the best single books in this field. 

63. James, William. *Brief Course in Psychology. Holt, 1892. 

Especially the chapters on the Self, Habit, Instinct, Emotion, 
and Will. 

64. KiRKPATRiCK, E. A. The Individual in the Making. 

Houghton Mifflin, 1911. 

Manual of the fundamentals of personality and the stages and 
processes of development. Chapters XII and IX, on adoles- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 385 

cence, are valuable for both parents and teachers of girls, although 
the view point and most of the illustrations are masculine. 

65. MacCunn. The Making of Character. Macmillan. 

Ethical principles underlying moral education. Sound philos- 
ophy. 

66. Richmond, Mrs. Ennis. The Mind of a Child. Longmans 

Green. 
Background of English nursery and school conditions. Valu- 
able for its insight, and for emphasis on character vs. possessing 
virtues. 

67. Thoendike, E. L. ^Elements of Psychology. A. G. Seller, 

N. Y. 1905. 
A good introduction to physiological and educational psy- 
chology, especially useful to parents and teachers who have never 
studied the subject, or who have had the analytic and descriptive 
without the functional. 

68. Staebuck, E. D. *The Psychology of Religion. Scrlbners, 

1900. 

The pioneer study of actual adolescent experience, and still 
an authority that cannot be omitted by the thorough student. The 
popular and slender handbooks not mentioned here are based on 
its data and conclusions. 

69. Tylee, John Mason. *Growth and Education. Houghton 

Mifflin. 1907. 

Chapters 12 and 13 give in accessible form the needed facts 
of the characteristic development of girls at different periods dur- 
ing adolescence, with statistics intelligibly summarized. Shows 
the relation of physical and mental development and health. 

70. Weigle, Luther A. The Pupil and the Teacher. Doran. 

The best single text book for an elementary course for Sunday 
schoolteachers. 

(See also Numbers 75, 92, 93.) 

V. Educational Peinciples and Methods 

71. Alexander, John. * Secondary Division Leaflets, No. 2 

and No. 4- International S. S. 

No. 2 treats of organization of S. S. classes and groups, and 
gives information about the various church and national organiza- 
tions for adolescents. No. 4 gives in small space a wealth of sug- 
gestions for organized activities, social, educational, recreational, 
altruistic and spiritual, that have borne the test of actual success. 

72. Allen, Annie Winsor. Home, School and Vacation. 

Excellent good sense in terse summaries. "A book of sugges- 
tions" for parents, of younger children, mostly. 

73. Andrews, Cyeil Beuin. Introduction to the Study of 

Adolescent Education. 
From the standpoint of English public (1. e. boarding) schools 



386 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

for boys. Methods of educational approach to social life of boys 
with girls, and to problems of sex-conduct, are adaptable to 
American girls. 

74. Butler, Nicholas Murray. The Meaning of Education. 

Macmillan, 1912. 

Chapters I to IV give an inspiring outlook on the aims and 
ideals of the new education. 

75. Cannon, W. B. Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear 

and Rage. Appleton, 1915. 

The result of years of accurate research told in language 
intelligible to the lay reader. A basis for intelligent educational 
procedure in governing emotional habits. 

76. CoE, George A. ^Education in Religion and Morals. 

Revell, 1904. 

Places the problems of education for character in their just 
relation to the inclusive problem of developing the individual 
through the whole of his social heritage for the whole of his 
responsibility. 

77. Cope, Henry F. ^Religious Education in the Family. 

Univ. Chicago Press, 1915. 

The absolutely essential book for parents. 

78. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Macmillan. 

"A most significant and profound analysis of the general 
aspects of child training in modern society." 

79. . How We Think. Heath and Co., 1909. 

An analysis that will help the teacher or parent who wishes 
ito help the girl solve her own problems. 

80. Hall, G. Stanley. Educational Prohlems (2 volumes). 

Appleton, 1911. 

Less extreme in theory than "Adolescence," contains chapters 
of great value to workers with girls, as follows : II, The Educa- 
tional Value of Dancing and Pantomime : IV, The Religious Train- 
ing of Children, and The Sunday School ; V, Moral Education ; 
VII, The Pedagogy of Sex : IX, The Budding Girl. 

81. Healey, William. "^Honesty. Bobbs-Merrill, 1915. 

A small and untechnical volume to be re-read often by par- 
ents and teachers. The achievement of this element of character, 
fruitful causes of dishonesty and means of cure, and prevention 
of temptations. 

82. Henderson, C. Hanford. What Is It to Be Educated? 

Houghton Miflain. 

A thoughtful presentation of the ideals of the "new education," 
stimulating even when it is impossible to agree with particular 
conclusions. Written by the bachelor head-master of a boys' 
school, illustrations and applications are wholly masculine, but 
its principles are broadly human. 

83. KiRKPATRiCK, E. A. *The Use of Money. Bobbs-Merrill, 

1915. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 387 

The educational, emotional, and moral values of money as it 
enters into the experience of the growing child and adolescent. 
Clear insight into the familiar puzzles of both parents and 
teachers. 

84. McMuRRAY, Frank. '^How to Study. Houghton Miflain. 

One of the clearest available statements of the standards and 
tests of educational processes conforming to the newer ideals. 
Written from the classroom view but not difficult to transfer to 
other situations. 

85. The Manual of the Camp Fire Girls. Camp Fire Outfitting 

Co., N. Y. 

Complete directions for girls and their guardians, for the 
conduct of the group activities. The list of Honors gives hun- 
dreds of standardized activities for adolescent girls. 

86. Rogers, Ethel. SeMgo-Wofielo Camp Fire Girls. Good 

Health Pub. Co., 1915. 

A delightfully vivid panorama, in word and picture, of the 
spirit of the Camp Fire movement, working out under ideal condi- 
tions and under the direction of its initiator. It will give to both 
girls and their mothers and guardians a truer conception of "what 
it all means." 

87. Seashore, C. E. Psychology in Daily Life. Appleton, 1913. 

In popular style, makes available to the ordinary person the 
results of the laboratory. Chapter I, on Play, shows its relation 
to personal and social development and to the essential values of 
religion. 

88. SissoN, Edward O. Essentials of Character. Macmillan, 

1915. 

A book of practical directions containing much excellent sense, 
although not all of the psychological and educational assumptions 
are sound. Especially good is chapter VIII, The Social Ideal. 

89. Stoner, Winifred Sackville. Natural Education. Bobbs- 

Merrill, 1914. 

The education of a "wonder-child," containing many sugges- 
tions that can be adopted or adapted by the "ordinary" parent. 

90. Strayer, George. A Brief Course in the Teaching Process. 

A good book for parents and leaders to read and apply to the 
education that goes on outside the school room. 

91. Swift, James Edgar. *Learning by Doing. Bobbs-Merrill, 

1914. 

The aims, ideals, and methods of the "new education," and the 
problems of school and home under present conditions. One of 
the best books to help parents and untrained teachers understand 
and practice the "project" or "problem" method in all phases of 
education. 

92. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology (3 volumes). 

Teachers College, 1913. 

Indispensable for the advanced student, but too technical and 
difficult for the layman. 



388 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

93. . Educational Psychology (1 volume) (revised 

edition). 

Valuable for the advanced student with limited time. 

94. . ^Education (A First Book). Macmillan, 1912. 

The simplest and clearest statement for the general reader of 
the aims, the forces, and the methods of the educative process, 
and of the original nature and the laws of human behavior. 

(See also Numbers 22, 25, 62, 65, 70.) 

VI. Biology, Personal and Social Hygiene, Sex Education 

(The mass of material under these titles is overwhelming in 
amount. One valuable book in each section of the field has 
been selected, on the basis of its service to the largest number 
of probable users of this list. A more extensive bibliography 
will appear in "Special Problems With Girls.") 

95. Armstrong, Dr. and Mrs. Donald B. *8ex in Life. Am. 

Soc. Hygiene Asso., 1916. 

The $1,000 prize pamphlet for boys and girls of 12-16. It 
strikes a new note in sex-education, that of moral and social 
achievement, and of human understanding of mutual helpfulness 
for social and spiritual ends. (A second part is soon to follow.) 

96. Bigelow, Maurice A. *Sex Education. Macmillan, 1916. 

A comprehensive discussion of the whole field, its needs, prin- 
ciples, wise and unwise methods, and a broad-minded considera- 
tion of objections. Wholesome and constructive. Carefully 
selected bibliography. The best single volume for parents and 
teachers. 

97. Cabot, Richard C. The Christian Approach to Social 

Morality. Y. W. C. A. 

Brilliant discussion of the "consecration of the affections," 
esthetically stimulating and helpful. Not informational. 

98. Fisher and Pisk. How to Live. Funk and Wagnalls, 1915. 

Individual hygiene for personal efficiency. 

99. Galloway, T. W^ Biology of Sex. Heath. 

A small elementary textbook useful for parents and older young 
people. 

100. Gavit, J. P. "Some Infmation for Mother." The Nation 

Press, 1914. 

A pamphlet reprint of a scientist's experience with a puzzled 
child. The danger of explaining one unknown fact by another. 

101. Geddes and Thompson. The Evolution of Sex (revised 

ed.) Scribners, 1911. 
A readable elementary scientific account of the evolution of 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 389 

sex throughout life in all its forms, and its significance in human 
society. A good foundation for approach to sex-education methods. 

102. GuYEB, Michael F. * Being Well Born. Bobbs-Merrill, 

1916. 

The laws of heredity and their bearing on race improvement 
clearly and simply stated for the non-scientific reader. Illus- 
trated. 

103. Hall, Jeanette Winter. Life's Story. Steadwell, La- 

crosse, Wis., 1911. 
Suitable for girls 11-15. Pamphlet. 

104. Hall, De. W. S. The Doctor's Daughter. Am. Med. 

Assoc, Chicago, 1913. 

Inexpensive pamphlet giving in story form the biological basis 
for later facts and principles. For girls about twelve. 

105. • ^Life's Problems. Am. Med. Assoc, Chicago, 

1913. 

Pamphlet story, simply and naturally taking up the problems of 
first menstruation ; social relations, chivalry and the chaperone ; 
"going wrong" ; "spooning," courtship, and engagement, as they 
actually come to the ordinary girl. Excellent. 

106. HoLLiNGSwoRTH, Leta S. Functional Periodicity. Teach- 

ers College, 1915. 

The first accurate measurement of the effect of menstruation 
on motor and mental achievement in normal women. Technical, 
but no scientific student can ignore it. 

107. Hood, Dr. Mary G. *For Girls and Mothers of Girls. 

Bobbs-Merrill, 1914. 

Sufficient and explicit information to answer all a girl's ques- 
tions till she is sixteen or eighteen. Life's beginnings ; birth ; 
happy and healthful physical life and its relation to moral and 
social conduct ; boy and girl and women friends ; lover and hus- 
band-to-be ; moods and self-control, all wholesomely treated. 

108. Jewett, Frances Gulick. The Next Generation. Ginn. 

Elementary Eugenics, suitable for the use of later adolescent 
girls. Intended as textbook for upper high school grades. 

109. Latimer, Dr. C. W. Girl and Woman. Forbes and Co. 

Physiology and hygiene of girl during her growth into woman- 
hood wisely emphasizing the psychological bearing of physiolog- 
ical changes. For mothers and older young women. 

110. LowRY, Dr. Edith B. ^Herself. Forbes and Co. 

Probably best and most accurate answer to the questions of 
the young woman of eighteen or over. 

111. March, Norah H. '^Towards Racial Health. Routledge, 

1914. 

"A handbook for parents, teachers, and social workers on the 
training of boys and girls." Comprehensive, sound, and helpful. 



390 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

112. McKee, Mabel A. The Heart of the Rose. Revell, 1913. 

A short story in which a mature sister helps her brother to 
see what true chivalry means. Good for both boys and girls of 
high school. 

113. MoELEY, Margaret Warneb. A Song of Life, Life and 

Love, Renewal of Life. 

Nature study, attractively illustrated, relating to the great 
world order of life and law and beauty the physical and spiritual 
facts of human reproduction. Parents find these books useful, 
at different ages, with imaginative and poetic children. 

114. Moshee, Eliza M. Health and Happiness. Funk and 

Wagnalls, 1912. 

Emphasizes control of bony framework, sitting and standing, 
as basis for healthful functioning of vital processes. It is unfor- 
tunate that so excellent a book should have used so many unneces- 
sary medical terms. Its best use is to give the leader of girls a 
new and interesting point of view which she may translate into 
their speech as occasion offers in hikes and athletic activities. 

lis. RiCHAEDS, Florence H. Hygiene for Girls. Heath, 1916. 

Textbook for upper grammar and high school girls ; simple and 
practical treatment of germs and disease, tuberculosis, antitoxins, 
narcotics, alcohol and patent medicines, from the social standpoint, 
with "just enough anatomy and physiology ... to give the 
pupil a ground work for the principles of hygiene." Public work 
of health boards, street cleaning, quarantine, and hospitals. A 
brief, clear, simple chapter on the reproductive system and its 
hygiene. 

116. RuMMELL, LuELLA Z. *Womanhood and Its Development. 

Burton Co., Kansas City. 
One of the best books for mature women. 
(See also Numbers 6 and 12.) 

VII. Physical Education, Plays and Games 

117. Bancroft, Jessie H. *Games for Playground, Home, 

School, and Gymnasium. Macmillan, 1916. 

A comprehensive collection of games, both "quiet" and "active" 
with complete directions that inspire the reader to seek the 
requisite one or one hundred other players and try them forth- 
with. An answer to the query "What can We play?" under 
almost any circumstances. 

118. BuRCHENAL, E. (Editor). ^Official Handbook of the Girls' 

Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League, N. Y. 

City. American Sports Publishing Co., 21 Warren St., 

N. Y., 1916. 

Classified lists of all games and sports suitable for girls of 
different ages, and articles on the place of play in their develop- 
ment. 

119. Dudley and Kellor. Athletic Games in the Education of 

Women. Holt. 1909. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 391 

Chapter I, on citizenship and social education, and II, on the 
educational value of athletics, are of great value. The rest of the 
book is more technical, for physical directors. 

120. GuLiCK, Ltjtheb H. The Healthful Art of Dancing. 

Doubleday-Page, 1910. 

A scientific treatment of the relation of women's recreation 
to physiology, sociology, psychology and aesthetics, based on 
feminine neuro-muscular coordinations and their corollaries. An 
excellent chapter on athletics for girls, frankly "recapitualistic." 

121. Hornby, John. The Joyous Booh of Singing Games. 

Macmillan. 

Words and music of most of the old English ballads and sing- 
ing games of childhood. 

122. Johnson, G. E. Education ty Plays and Games. Ginn 

and Co., 1907. 

Theory, history and place of play in education. Bibliography 
good, up to date of publication. 

123. Lee, Joseph. *Play in Education. Macmillan. 

The philosophy and the art of play, and its influence in devel- 
oping the individual into a socialized moral being, set forth in a 
style as invigorating as play itself. Pages 392-494 are specially 
valuable for friends of adolescent girls. 

124. Maeks, Janette. Vacation Camping for Girls. 

A reliable and adequate guide for the leader. No information 
that can be needed seems to have been omitted in this compact 
handbook. 

VIII. Vocational Guhjance 

(This field is one in which new and valuable material is 
constantly appearing. It is wise to consult the librarian in the 
nearest public library. Only a few of the more general books 
are suggested.) 

125. Benedict-Roche. Salesmanship for Women. 

126. Bloomfield, Meyer. Youth, School and Vocation. 

Houghton Mifflin, 1915. 

History of the "vocational guidance" movement, its principles, 
workings, advice, charts and statistics, suggestive material for 
starting the work (from actual experience). Essential to those 
interested in this phase of girl life. 

127. Laselle and Wiley. Vocations for Girls. Houghton 

Mifflin. 

Facts collected by high school teachers to guide girls who 
must earn their living at once. Personal and technical require- 
ments, wages, social advantages and disadvantages, chance of pro- 
motion and of personal growth. Valuable. 

128. Weaver. Vocations for Girls. Barnes. 



392 BIBLIOGEAPHY 



IX. Books for Girls, About Various Life Problems 

(This list is intended to be by no means exhaustive, but only- 
suggestive. The spirit of these books is wholesome and real. 
Most of them are adapted to young women rather than to 
young girls. A later book will attempt to go more thoroughly 
into the problem of the girl's reading.) 

129. Bennett, Arnold. How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a 
Day. 

130. . The Human Machine. 

For older young women. 

131. Bennett, Helen Christine. American Women in Civic 

Wprk. Dodd, Mead, 1915. 

The way in which eleven women of our contemporary life 
found something new to contribute to the world. Must stimulate 
initiative. 

132. Beard, C. A. and M. R. American Citizenship. Macmillan, 

1916. 

Government regarded as a cooperative instrument to be used 
in the service of humanity ; dynamic, not static ; important as 
function, not machinery. To stimulate an active, personal inter- 
est in government. 

133. Briggs, L. B. R. My Chance to Achieve. Bobbs-Merrill, 

1915. 

Good reading for "all aspiring youths" and maidens too. 
134. . Girls and Education. Houghton Miffin. 

Addresses to girls in and out of college life on problems of 
culture, information and life. Good, sound, and modern help for 
girls seeking to formulate their ideals. Feminine pettiness and 
sensitiveness especially well handled. 

135. Cabot, Richard C. What Men Live By. 

A companionable book for later adolescents, stimulating to 
high ideals and artistic living with common materials. 

136. Chance, Mrs. Burton. Mother and Daughter. Century 

Co., 1910. 

"A book of ideals for girls" of social privilege and comfort- 
able economic status, whose special problems it treats sympathet- 
ically and wholesomely. 

137. CoNDE, Bertha. The Business of Being a Friend. 

Houghton Mifflin, 1916. 

The problems of friendship discussed in a wholesome, intelli- 
gible fashion, helpful to older girls and young women. Its analyses 
of some of the causes of failure and success are applicable also 
to the relation between the mature woman and her younger 
friends. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 393 

138. Creighton, Louise. The Art of Living. 

Wise and wholesome words on getting along with people, and 
other topics. 

139. Edwards, R. H. Christianity and Amusements. Asso- 

ciation Press. 

The material and conclusions of his other volume (Number 5) 
are used as the basis for a ten weeks' course for class or indi- 
vidual use in daily devotional study. 

140. FosDiCK, H. E. The Meaning of Prayer. Y. M. C. A. 

Press, 1916. 
One of the greatest of little books. 

141. Knott, Laura A. Yesper Talks to Girls. Houghton 

Mifflin, 1916. 

Given on Sunday afternoons to the students of a preparatory 
school. Vital, practical and modern, a good model for teachers 
and club leaders. 

142. Laughlin, Clara E. Miladi. Revell. 

The intimate problems of young women, in growing up ; in 
reading, and shopping, and making ends meet ; in adjusting ideals 
and realities to each other in friendships and mating and home- 
making. Tender, sympathetic, sometimes sentimental in style, but 
wholesome in common sense. 

143. Marks, Janette. A GirVs Student Days and After. 

Revell, 1911. 

The live problems of older girls sympathetically met. Com- 
parison with Number 141 will help a teacher or club leader to 
adapt such talks to the relative ages of the two groups of girls. 

144. Oppenheim, Nathan. Mental Growth and Control. Mac- 

millan, 1901. 

Popular psychology for youth without higher education. 
Wholesome emphasis on possibility of controlling the conditions 
in one's own life on which mental efficiency depends. "Educa- 
tion of the Emotions" is especially good, although the concept of 
"religion" (p. 226-229) is inadequate. 

145. Sangster, Margaret E. Winsome Womanhood. 

Ideals of the gentlewoman, which our brusquely "efficient" 
age may well revive. 

146. Slattery, Margaret. Just Over the Hill. 

Anything Miss Slattery writes for girls will be found inimitable 
in its understanding and its helpfulness. 

(See also Number 29.) 

147. Smith, Nellie M. Three Gifts of Life. Dodd, Mead and Co. 

Exhortations to younger girls who have no more than a 
grammar-school education, to meet worthily the responsibilities of 
womanly life. Chapter IV is the valuable part of the book ; "The 
Gift of Choice." 



394 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

148. Thoburn, Helen. Christian Citizenship for Girls. Y. W. 

C. A., 1914. 

To be used with girls in the early idealistic stage of develop- 
ment. Insight and good pedagogy make this stimulating to the 
leader's inventiveness in other situations. 

149. WiLBUK, Mary A. Every-Day Business for Women. 

Houghton Mifflin, 1913. 

A manual for use by intelligent women who are ignorant of 
business, plain and comprehensive. Banking and checks, getting 
money in emergencies, transferring property, employment con- 
tracts. Useful also as a reference book in "practical talks" in 
girls' clubs. 

150. Y. W. C. A. ''The Inch Library:' National Board Y. W. 

C. A. 

Send to the Publication Department for a current list of these 
and other leaflets, pamphlets, and booklets, by many writers, 
which this organization is producing for the varied and changing 
needs of girls and young women and their leaders. 

(See also Numbers 10, 12, 19, 29, 65, 84, 87, 88 for maturer 

girls and those of especially keen mentality.) 



INDEX 



Action, basis of will, 42, 43, 
65, 66; educational use of, 
67, 68; and religion, 249, 
254, 255, 258, 259, 354ff. 

Activity, 41; lack of, 109, 
121; habits of, 293; suit- 
able, 135ff., 128, 152, 153, 
269, 270. 

Addams, Jane, quoted, 198, 
200. 

Adolescence, characteristics 
of, 23, 24, 184, 197, 234, 243, 
291; early, 75; middle, 159; 
late, 275, 289, 307, 374; con- 
tinuity, 27, 28; emotions of, 
58, 255; as masculine, 73. 

Ador6e, 18, 106, 108, 121, 127, 
144, 177, 190, 191, 322. 

Advertisements, see Strong, 
Dr. E. K. 

Advice, 130, 168, 310, 340. 

Afeection, child's, 44; differ- 
entiation of, 104; expres- 
sion of, 227ff.; consecration 
■of, 129, 324, 325; as motive, 
240, 261, 303; false, 132. 

Ambition, 53, 60, 105, 109, 
201, 214, 301, 361, 368. 

Amusement, see Recreation. 

Analysis of situations, 88, 342, 
346ff., 349, 350ff. 

Anger, 59, 100, 102, 145. 

Annoyers, Annoy ingness, 36; 
of habit, 48, 69; of emotion. 



54, 69, 101; educational use 

of, 49, 50, 54, 145, 241, 340, 

365. 
Arguing, 124. 
Association of ideas, 39ff., 43, 

51ff., 94ff., 165, 229, 232, 

239, 247, 250, 283, 297ff., 

303, 306, 343, 362. 
Authority, 96, 123, 131, 145, 

264, 265, 282. 

B 

Beauty, love of, 87, 92, 215ff., 
251. 

Behavior, 32, 85; laws of, 48, 
50; governed by situations, 
46-49; ideas of, 124; re- 
ligious, 254, 350. 

Bibliography, 377ff. 

Biology of girl, 28ff., 75ff. 

Books, see Reading. 

Bosworth, E. I., quoted, 372. 

Boys, girls' reaction to, 18, 
19, 64, 86, 87, 105, 127, 133, 
193ff., 217; different educa- 
tion of, 67, 235; organiza- 
tions, 109, 269; dispropor- 
tionate literature concern- 
ing, 78. 



Camp Fire, 137, 151, 269. 
Caresses, 131ff., 227ff., 260. 
Center of Personalization, 
243, 244. 



395 



396 



INDEX 



Chaperon, 194-197. 
Character, 65, 121, 154, 162, 

186, 201, 236, 249, 253ff., 

259, 260, 267, 339, 340. 
Chum, 17, 106, 121, 187, 197. 
Church, 142, 144, 236, 238, 

245ff., 258, 268, 359, 360, 

362. 
Cliques, see Organizations. 
Confirmation, 236, 245. 
Conscience, 87, 145ff., 259. 
Conversion, 236-241, 363, 
Crisis, 159, 172, 178, 200, 271, 

275, 278, 341. 
Crush, 192, 219-221, 271, 278. 



Dancing, 2 3 Off. 

Decisions, 142, 145, 258, 310ff., 

319-321, 327, 338, 340, 368. 
Democracy, 44, 224, 268. 
Details, confusion due to, 296, 

312, 338. 
Differences, individual, see 

Variability. 
Disillusionment, 220, 225. 
Doubt, 96, 248ff., 259, 348. 

E 

Education, 47, process of, 46, 
233; of the will, 65; re- 
ligious, 146, 241. 

Educator's task, 47, 50, 145, 
169, 183, 212, 219, 252, 271, 

312, 313, 323, 328, 336, 341, 
349. 

Efficiency, 277, 279, 293, 307, 

313, 323, 325, 332, 339, 340. 



Emotions, physical basis of, 
55, 85, 163-170, 227ff., 294ff., 
343ff.; educational use of, 
57, 58, 231ff., 260; as mo- 
tive, 54-56, 59, 172, 223, 237, 
301ff., 303ff.; confusion of, 
85, 100; religious, 253ff. 

Ethical, conduct, 58, 266, 
271, 352; practice, 154, 306; 
viewpoint, 279, 327. 

Example, teaching by, 147, 
190, 362. 

Exclusiveness, 110, 222, 268. 

Experience, determining de- 
velopment, 31, 234, 241, 
260, 309, 312, 363; condi- 
tioned, 32; changing, 94ff., 
190, 257, 258, 328fe.; prob- 
lems of, 96ff., 182, 331ff.; 
and imagination, 40-42, 62, 
173, 174, 179. 

Expression, 106, 141, 150ff., 
200, 231, 253, 256, 257, 268. 



Faith, 330, 332, 356-358, 372. 

Family, unit of child's world, 
44, 45; first ideals, 59, 60, 
332; new relation to, 89, 
121ff., 187, 319-321; relation 
to religion, 143, 230, 375. 

Fellowship, 366. 

Flippancy, 97, 267. 

Friendship, 190, 192, 219, 
301, 321, 338, 366. 

G 

Gale, Zona, quoted, 345-346 
(note). 



INDEX 



397 



Gang, 109, 187. 

Germ cells, 29, 77ff. 

Giggling, 126, 171, 234. 

Glands, 79, 167. 

Good taste, 127, 131. 

Growth, bodily, 28ff., 74ff., 
104, 136, 159, 276; of ex- 
perience, 75; of standards 
and ideals, 105, 347ff., 
350ff., 368, 371; in religion, 
154ff., 350fe. 



H 



Habit, in ideas, 38, 39; laws 
of, 50, 51; laws applied, 51- 
54, 241, 340; educational 
use of, 49-51, 241, 340, 342; 
as wealth, 52; of health, 
162, 170, 280; and char- 
acter, 181ff., 259, 306; and 
religion, 141, 237ff., 363, 
375; and efficiency, 293, 303, 
308, 340-345, 348. 

Health, and morals, 167; 
habit of, 162, 280; educa- 
tion for, 262; achievemient 
of, 281; incentives to, 286; 
responsibility for, 287; con- 
servation of, 289. 

Hollingworth, L. S. quoted, 
161fC. 

Homesickness, 221. 

Honesty, 262. 

Honor, 263, 267, 335ff. 

Hormones, 79, 160. 

Humor, 97-100, 121, 268, 338. 

Hygieiie, 47, 76, 82, 136, 169, 
284fe. 



Ideals, 19, 59, 60, 121, 140, 
148, 188, 189, 223, 247, 259, 
310ff., 329, 332, 364. 

Imagery, forms of, 297ff.; re- 
sults of, 304. 

Imagination, and experience, 
40-42, 62-64; educational 
use of, 62, 218; dramatic, 
63; creative, 318, 348. 

Individualism, 265. 

Instincts, and habits, 37, 38, 
42, 202; and interests, 60, 
325; stimulation of, 83, 285, 
301, 326, 355; and religion, 
246, 355; instinct-acts, 35. 

Interests, 60; use of, 61, 326, 
327; in sex, 64, 65; de- 
velopment of, 180, 268, 269, 
327. 

Irreverence, 97, 267. 



James, William, quoted, 189, 

285. 
Jesus, 62, 149, 237-240, 244, 

255, 318, 350-360, 363. 

K 

King, Henry Churchill, quot- 
ed, 191. 

Kissing, 132, 228; games, 21, 
230, 245. 

Knowledge, kinds of, 122; 
related to activity, 41, 86, 
259, 270, 312, 332, 353, 362, 
363, 373; and vocation, 314. 



398 



INDEX 



Laughlin, C. E., referred to, 

22, 112, 311. 
Laughter, see Humor and 

Giggling. 
Leadership (and popularity), 

110, 127, 137, 187, 218, 321- 

323, 341, 373. 
Learning-process, 74. 
Love, 207-210, 301, 303, 323- 

327, 357, 366. 
Lover, 116, 192-194, 209, 304; 

undesirable, 19, 325. 
Loyalty, 109, 190, 246, 248, 

266, 353. 

M 

Macdonald, George, quoted, 
244. 

Marriage, 225, 275, 276. 

Menstruation, 115, 160fe., 168. 

Modesty, 68, 169, 286. 

Money, 201, 206, 263. 

Mood, 56, 163. 

Moral, sensitiveness, 145, 259, 
352; health, 167ff.; stand- 
ards, 228, 235, 250, 361; 
steadfastness, 260; responsi- 
bility, 265, 324, 339. 

Mother, as ideal, 116, 191, 
197; relation to, 124, 127, 
194. 

N 

Neglected girl, 22; reli- 
giously, 143. 

Nerves, sensori-motor, 33, 34; 
development, 77; sensitiv- 
ity, 80ff.; "paths," 35ff., 



86; influence of, 65, 
201ff. 
Neurones, 32, 33, 39. 



Organization, girls', forms of, 
21, 109, 151, 222ff., 258, 
269; desire for, 187, 268; 
and supervision, 137; his- 
toric development, 114-118. 

Ovaries, 78-80, 84, 166, 167. 



Perils, 189, 193, 217; of re- 
ligious life, 349, 358-361, 
366. 

Periodicity, 160ff. 

Personality, integration of, 
45, 86, 88, 177-183, 236, 239, 
242-252, 367; disintegration 
of, 180-182, 242-252, 358-361, 
367; value of, 312; expres- 
sion of, 304; and health, 
287. 

Pictures, 253. 

Play (see also Recreation), 
lack of, 41, 109, 135; need 
for, 203-205. 

Power, 87, 193, 217, 224, 303, 
323. 

Prayer, 150, 261, 365. 

Problems, educational, 46, 
103, 120ff., 183, 203, 212ff., 
291, 328-333, 341; social, 21, 
22, 214ff., 228-233, 319-327; 
religious, 140ff., 234-252, 
309, 361-374. 

Puberty, 75, 91, 117. 



INDEX 



399 



Purpose, 63, 245, 255, 292, 
309, 312, 316, 320, 347, 349, 
351, 355. 



R 



Reading (see also Books), 

134, 149, 179. 
Recapitulation theory, 112. 
Recreation, 203-205, 233, 269, 

270, 288. 
Religion, 59, 138, 140-144, 235- 

248, 267, 324, 349ff. 
Reticence, 264. 
Revivals, 255-256. 
Righteousness (see also 

Ethics), 228, 266, 352. 
Romance, 107, 121, 173, 192, 

207, 217, 218, 221, 225, 226. 
Ruediger, W. C, quoted, 371 

(note). 



S 



Salvation, 234ff., 251. 

Satisfiers, satisfyingness, 36; 
of habit, 48, 69, 94; of emo- 
tion, 54, 69, 100, 258, 302, 
305; of ideals, 59, 188, 314, 
316; of persons, 186, 335, 
365ff. ; and temperament, 
176. 

Self, of childhood, 30; chang- 
ing, 87, 351; assertion, 88, 
120ff.; new relations of, 
104, 118, 120ff., 140ff.; pos- 
sible, 209, 214-220, 309ff.; 
353, 359; integration of, 
242-246, 272. 

Senses, Sensitivity, changes 



in, 85, 92, 293; moral, 145, 
259, 352; and emotions, 
163ff., 299ff. 
Sentiment, 83, 225, 226, 253, 

254. 
Service, 151ff., 255, 268-270, 
293, 312, 317, 318, 332, 355- 
360, 368, 369, 374. 
Sex-differences, 10, 61, 64, 66, 
68, 265, 269, 295ff., 307. 

Sex-education, 68, 87, 105, 128- 
130, 231, 249ff., 325. 

Situation and Response, 36ff., 
42ff., 47, 50, 94, 113, 162ff., 
305, 306, 307, 325, 326, 
343ff., 346. 

Skill, 136, 202, 277-279, 287, 
304, 318, 342. 

Slang, 125, 267. 

Social Environment, 351, 
physiological effect, 82; his- 
toric development, 112ff. ; 
as motive, 186; as teaching 
material, 213; problems of, 
198-201; and religion, 246, 
271. 

Social Responsibility, 202ff., 
208-210, 224, 235, 278, 281, 
287, 290, 315, 324, 333, 339. 

Somatic, 29ff., 76ff. 

Sororities, 223. 

Spooning, 131ff., 193, 231. 

Standards, 94-96, 128ff., 133, 
188fe., 234, 325, 328fe., 333- 
342, 347ff., 350. 

Stockton, Frank, quoted, 204. 

Strong, Dr. E. K., quoted, 
294ff., and note. 

Students, government experi- 



400 



INDEX 



ments, 337; and honor, 335, 
337ff. 

Sunday school, teacher, 144; 
curricula, 149, 248; activi- 
ties, 151ff., 262, 269, 360, 
371. 

Surrender, 247. 



Tanner, Amy E., quoted, 
337ff. 

Teacher, school, 20, 123, 188; 
Sunday school, 144; stand- 
ard, 213. 

Temper, see Anger. 

Temperament, 12, 22, 174-177, 
303. 

Thinking, 291, 292, 329, 369ff., 
375. 

Thorndike, E. L., quoted, 36, 
51, 85. 90, 117. 

Truth-telling, 41, 63, 145, 338. 



Variability, 23, 36, 54, 73ff., 



80ff., 89ff., 92, 142, 175, 186, 

191, 227, 229, 271, 275, 276, 

285, 291, 312-314. 
Verse, 253. 
Vocation, 201, 278, 310, 313- 

321. 

W 

Ward, Lester F., quoted, 315 
(note). 

Will, and activity, 42, 65-67, 
259; and affection, 44, 325; 
education of, 65. 

Womanliness, 67, 245, 330. 

Woodbridge, Elisabeth, quot- 
ed, 335. 

Worship, 150, 361, 366, 372. 



Young People's Societies, 

256ff. 
Young Women's Christian 

Association, 21, 201, 205, 

278, 337. 



LbAp 



